The Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe aims to ensure that people all over Europe have equal access to the medicines they need at an affordable price point. Accessing the right medication at the right time, and without incurring high out-of-pocket expenditure, is of critical importance for people living with diabetes, who might otherwise develop life-disabling or -threatening complications, and have also been proven to be extremely vulnerable to COVID-19.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that there are still profound inequalities in access to medicines and care across Europe. For this reason, IDF Europe welcomes the EU Pharmaceutical strategy, and urges the European Commission to:
• Define stronger obligations on medicines producers to guarantee fair and timely availability
• Ensure that companies that receive an EU-wide marketing authorisation make that product available in all EU countries
• Improve the coordination and transparency among EU countries to ensure that pricing decisions in one country do not negatively impact access in another EU country
• Ensure that people living with diabetes and other conditions as well as their healthcare teams have full and transparent access to comparable data between biosimilars and reference products.
IDF Europe also strongly believes that the involvement of people living with diabetes is critical at all stages of the drug development process – from early research through to marketing authorisation and reimbursement decisions, and that there cannot be real patient-centred diabetes care without the meaningful involvement of people living with diabetes.
You can download IDF Europe’s full response to the EU Pharmaceutical Strategy here.
