Pharmaceutical policy will be developed jointly by two EU Commissioners

Pharmaceutical policy in the new European Commission will be developed jointly by two Commissioners – one for the single market, industry and enterprises, and the other for health, Commission President-elect Jean-Claude Juncker has announced. “Responsibility for medicines and pharmaceutical products will stay with the Directorate-General for Health because I agree with you that medicines are not goods like any other,” the new President told the Members of the European Parliament (MEP) this week,

Dangerous Dietary Supplements Return to Store Shelves

The Food and Drug Administration frequently recalls dietary supplements that are found to contain banned substances. But a new study shows that many of these products return to store shelves months later with the same dangerous ingredients. The findings suggest that health authorities may be fighting an uphill battle against a small number of supplement companies that repeatedly sell contaminated products. The new study, published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that out of more than two dozen supplements that were pulled from shelves

ECDC: Epidemiological update of Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa

10 Oct 2014 - Epidemiological update of Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa

​Event background information
Chronology of events – key dates

 

22 March 2014: the Guinea Ministry of Health notified WHO about a rapidly evolving outbreak of EVD [1]. The first cases occurred in December 2013. The outbreak is caused by a clade of Zaïre ebolavirus that is related but distinct from the viruses that have been isolated from previous outbreaks in central Africa, and clearly distinct from the Taï Forest ebolavirus that was isolated in Côte d’Ivoire from 1994–1995 [2-4]. The first cases were reported from south-eastern Guinea and the capital Conakry.

Critics applaud EU Commission 'u-turn' on EMA

Shifting EMA oversight to DG Enterprise and Industry will put patients at greater risk of adverse events according to NGO Health Action International which suspects EFPIA "had a hand" in planned European Commission reshuffle. Critics of plans by European Commission President-elect Jean-Claude Juncker to remove oversight for the European Medicines Agency from the Commission’s Health and Consumer Directorate and give it to the Enterprise Directorate have welcomed reports that this move will not now take place.

India-made drugs for poorer nations inferior, says US think tank study

India-made drugs sold in Africa are inferior and of poorer quality than those sold in India and other middle-income countries, alleges a new paper by an US think-tank American Enterprise Institute(AEI), the findings of which were to be announced in a briefing at the Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

European Commission to transfer responsibility for medicines to DG Enterprise

Europe’s research-based pharmaceutical industry association has said that it did not lobby for the new European Commission to remove responsibility for medicines from the Directorate-General for Health and Consumers and give it back to DG Enterprise.