Health policy: EU Commission: Medicine production in Europe should increase

In order for people in Europe to be reliably supplied with partly vital medication, more medication should be produced in the EU. The production of medicinal products should benefit from faster approval processes in the future and can be supported more easily with public funds, as the authority announced. Before the rules can come into force, the European Parliament and the EU countries must agree to the EU Commission’s proposal.

“In recent years, Member States have been confronted with a serious lack of medication,” said the EU Commission. Pain relievers, antibiotics or fever juices for children were affected.

According to commission, there are many reasons why there have been supply problems in the EU in recent years. These include bottlenecks in active ingredients. But also that production concentrates in a few countries contribute to the problems.

Ulrike Holzgrabe, pharmacy professor at the University of Würzburg, said that there is a “very rigid environmental legislation” that difficult to manufacture in Europe. For example, the chemical industry in Germany has decommissioned important branches of manufacture for environmental reasons.

80 to 90 percent of the medication from Asia

According to EU health ministers, 80 to 90 percent of medication in Europe, especially from China, comes from China. The German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and ten of his colleagues from other EU countries had recently warned against dangerous effects on routine interventions and actually easy-to-treat infections if supply chains should be interrupted in the event of a conflict. They demand to spend parts of the billions of billions of upgrading plans for medication safety.

Relief for the healthcare system

Medical staff should also be able to relieve the law. “There are people who have fifty percent of their working hours to do with looking at: Where do I get something from, where do I get a medication that may be used as an alternative?” Said EU MP Peter Liese (CDU). If you shifted the complete production of a medication to Europe, it would cost money, Liese said, “but I am convinced that the health system will save costs.”

Pharmacists want to be allowed to propose alternatives themselves

The President of the Federal Association of German Pharmacists’ Associations, Gabriele Overwiening, advocated that pharmacists in the future may propose alternatives for out of out of stock. So far, a recipe from the doctor has been necessary. Patients would sometimes have to go to the doctor and pharmacy several times before they received a suitable medication.