[e-drug] HAI Launches New Campaign on Medicine Prices in The Netherlands

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E-DRUG: HAI Launches New Campaign on Medicine Prices in The Netherlands
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Dear E-Druggers,

Yesterday, Health Action International launched a new campaign on the
soaring price of new medicines in The Netherlands. The campaign calls on
political candidates running in the Dutch national election to commit to
putting an end to soaring medicine prices in The Netherlands, where
expenditure on the highest-priced pharmaceuticals has reached €1.7 billion
per year.

The bilingual ‘Our Medicines, Our Right
<http://www.ourmedicinesourright.eu/&gt; campaign, supported by a range of
Dutch civil society organisations including KWF Kankerbestrijding (Dutch
Cancer Society), Borstkankervereniging Nederland (Dutch Breast Cancer
Society) and Aidsfonds (AIDS Foundation), asks the Dutch public to sign a
petition addressed to Dutch parliamentarians and political candidates.

A feature of the campaign are two video interviews we conducted with two
different voices in the debate on rising medicine prices. Our first
interview was with Dr Ernst Kuipers, Chairman of the Board of Directors at
the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, where prices for new medicines
grown by 80 percent (from 100 million to €180 million) in just seven years.

The second video is with Anita Frehe, a breast cancer patient from
Zuidhorn, The Netherlands, who was diagnosed with breast cancer 11 years
ago. In 2013, the cancer unfortunately metastasised to her bones. Part of
her treatment was the medicine Pertuzumab, which is now being sold for an
estimated €54,000 per patient, per year.

If you would like to follow the campaign, please find us on Facebook and
Twitter <https://twitter.com/HAImedicines&gt;\.

Our campaign website is:
http://www.ourmedicinesourright.eu/

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me at
james@haiweb.org.

Kind regards,
--
James Still
Communications Advisor
Health Action International
Overtoom 60-2, 1054 HK Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Phone: + 31 (0) 20 412 4523
www.haiweb.org <http://www.haiweb.org/&gt;