Brochure | 28 March 2019 | Download PDF
Access to medicines in the EU is crucial not only for improving our health and well-being, but also to fulfil our human right to health. In the European Union (EU), the price of many new patented medicines is growing higher every year, jeopardising the ability of patients to access them when needed and threatening the sustainability of our healthcare systems.
This situation is aggravated by a narrow interpretation of intellectual property rights that creates harmful monopolies. At the same time, it has been reported that new medicines and indications often offer little—or no—added therapeutic value over those that are already available. Added to this, the trend of accelerating market approval involves evaluating medicines on the basis of limited clinical data, leading to greater uncertainty about a therapy’s true effects.
In this booklet we take you through the work Health Action International (HAI) does to improve access to medicines in the EU that are affordable, safe, effective, and quality-assured . This includes our focus in the EU in 2019, what our main activities are and some of our partners, and finally some of our successes so far. As an added bonus, you can test your knowledge on access to medicines by taking our quiz on page 7.