EU legislation threatens medical care in new member countries
Access to affordable medical care in the eastern European countries preparing to join the European Union next May is being jeopardised by the European Commission's insistence on pushing through - before their accession - EU legislation delaying the availability of competitively priced generic medicines, a key pharmaceutical industry figure has claimed.
Access to affordable medical care in the eastern European countries preparing to join the European Union next May is being jeopardised by the European Commission's insistence on pushing through - before their accession - EU legislation delaying the availability of competitively priced generic medicines, a key pharmaceutical industry figure has claimed.
Greg Perry, director general of the European Generic Medicines Association, said: 'It must be recognised that eastern Europe has a major health gap with the current EU-15 (existing member states). Real spending per capita on healthcare in these countries is less than €400 per annum compared with more than €1,600 in the EU-15.' He claimed that access to affordable generic medicines, 'which represent up to 70% of all medicines dispensed to patients at only 30% of the total budget spend on medicines,' are absolutely 'critical' to healthcare delivery in the eastern Europe region.
Mr Perry was commenting on last month's decision by the EU Council of Ministers to extend periods of data exclusivity for new medicines.