Health
Ex-World Medical Association boss calls for EU-wide drug reserve
View of the automated medication warehouse of a pharmacy in Leipzig. photo
© Jan Woitas/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
In several European countries there is a lack of children’s medicine – Germany has a supply shortage of antibiotic juices. An EU reserve could prevent that in the future, believes Frank Ulrich Montgomery.
In view of the lack of individual medicines, the former chairman of the World Medical Association, Frank Ulrich Montgomery, calls for an EU-wide medicine reserve. The bottlenecks have been increasing for more than ten years. “The reason is wrongly set economic incentives in the pharmaceutical industry,” he told the newspapers of the Funke Group.
“The margins for mass products outside of patent protection are considered to be small, “Big Pharma” is no longer interested in these drugs and is shifting production to low-wage countries such as China or India. If a factory burns down there, a basic substance is missing or there are quality defects – suddenly there is a medicine missing all over the world.”
An EU reserve as an “obligation for the pharmaceutical industry, monitored and managed by the state and the medical profession” can be created immediately, explained Montgomery. Politicians must also bring production sites back to Europe with the right economic framework. Supply chains should be legally secured with multiple sources for medicines.
Last week, paediatricians from several European countries wrote a fire letter to their health ministers denouncing the lack of pediatric medicines. The Federal Ministry of Health recently officially declared a shortage of antibiotic juices for children – this means that the import rules can be relaxed.