Article Text

Download PDFPDF
EU news
Council of Europe – recommendation on access to medicines and devices
  1. Stephanie Kohl
  1. Policy & Advocacy, European Association of Hospital Pharmacists, Brussels, Belgium
  1. Correspondence to Stephanie Kohl, Policy & Advocacy, European Association of Hospital Pharmacists, Brussels, Belgium; Stephanie.Kohl{at}eahp.eu

Statistics from Altmetric.com

Request Permissions

If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

In February, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers adopted a Recommendation seeking to promote equitable access to medicinal products and medical equipment in a situation of shortage and to safeguard the fundamental rights of individuals who need them for serious or life-threatening health conditions in the 46 Council of Europe member states.

Recommendation CM/REC(2023)one on ‘Equitable access to medicinal products and medical equipment in a situation of shortage’ was prepared as a response to the lessons learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing shortages of medicines and medical devices across Europe. It calls for ensuring that there is a system in place to prevent and mitigate situations of shortage and to better prepare for such shortages.

HMA/EMA multi-stakeholder workshop on shortages

At the beginning of March, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA) organised a two-day workshop focused on medicine shortages. EAHP’s Director of Professional Development Despoina Makridaki represented the views of hospital pharmacists.

Workshop participants were informed about the HMA/EMA Task Force activities on medicines shortages and availability and interfaces with other initiatives, received updates on the progress with the Task Force deliverables and identify areas of agreement as well as areas for further discussion and had the possibility to share their perspectives and activities seeking to address availability …

View Full Text

Footnotes

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.