On Tuesday 18 January 2022 (14:00-15:15), the Alliance co-hosted the second event of the Zooming in on Solution to the Affordability of Medicines webinar series along with Global Health Advocates (GHA) and the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA).
Speakers and participants discussed potential obstacles and ways to establish more transparency of R&D and other real pharmaceutical costs, including the views of different stakeholders.
Watch the discussion here
Speakers and presentations
- Ellen ’t Hoen | Director Medicines Law & Policy, slides
- Momir Radulović| Director, Slovenian Agency for Medicinal Products and medical device, slides
- Anne Hendrickx | Advisor in the Research department of Solidaris (Belgian mutual fund), slides
- Harald Mische | Deputy Head of Unit, Medical products: quality, safety, innovation, DG Sante, slides
Full agenda of the webinar
Background
High prices of new medicines are affecting patient access across Europe. They are justified by industry upon the need to stimulate innovation and to recoup high R&D costs. On the other hand, producers of generic medicines blame low prices as the main cause for the exponential increase of medicine shortages across Europe.
However, the lack of transparency around the real costs for the pharmaceutical sector is an important obstacle to a better understanding of what would be fair prices for new and old medicines. In 2019, the second World Health Assembly passed a resolution to improve the transparency of markets for health products. The new Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe also acknowledges that there is a lack of transparency, in particular regarding costs of publicly (co)funded R&D.