E-DRUG: 'Can we afford our medicines?' conference at European parliament
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Hi E-Druggers,
I have just watched a video recording of a small conference held in the European Parliament on Wednesday 12th November 2014.
It is available through the link at
http://greenmediabox.eu/en/ct/62-Can-we-afford-our-medicines-
For those of you with a fast connection it is well worth watching.
When I requested the PowerPoint slides for the session they were sent to me by Yannis Natsis
<yannis.natsis@gmail.com>.
They are well worth asking for.
As occurs in such settings there are some very good presentations and comments and others that were less exciting.
There were speeches in Greek, there was translation but this was not captured in the video.
The speech by the French MEP was in French even though she also spoke English. This was translated.
The Irish MEP had to leave for another meeting so gave her comments near the end.
She was excellent but could have been missed if you were fast forwarding.
The conference was organized in two segments the first chaired by David Hammerstien and the second by Ellen t'Hoen.
The first presentation by Francois Berdougo from Medicin du Monde focused on access to Hepatitis C.
New information to me especially about the situation in France.
The two best presentations I thought were by Rohit Malpani now of the MSF Access campaign and Teresa Alves now of Prescrire.
Rohit has combined his experiences from Oxfam with his present position with MSF and combines the strengths of both of these organizations.
Teresa was previously with Health Action International and her advocacy and analytic skills were clearly on show.
Both were very impressive.
Jamie Love presented on alternative approaches to innovation focusing on cancer medications.
I had heard or read much of what he said but he put it all together in a more nuanced way quoting multiple complementary approaches.
Both segments were well chaired. I particularly liked how Ellen t'Hoen ensured that the representatives from DG Enterprise and DG SANCO were encouraged to speak and then Ellen identified key issues skated over in their responses.
So if you can access the site I would encourage you to do so.
Better if you request the slides first but if you can't it is still worth watching.
Richard Laing
Professor International Health
Boston University School of Public Health,
801 Massachusetts Avenue Boston MA 02118
Tel 617 414 1445 (Office) 617 435 7860 (Mobile)
E mail richardl@bu.edu