Europe's patients suffer from sick drugs market

IN November, as part of the Dutch EU presidency, a distinguished panel of ministers, public health officials, the pharmaceutical industry and the World Health Organization (WHO) convened in The Hague to discuss how to target research better towards producing ‘priority medicines'. The aim was and remains to identify ‘pharmaceutical gaps', diseases for which effective treatments are lacking and towards which research should be prioritised. The Luxembourg presidency will continue the work since at stake is a sizeable pot of money to be assigned to medicines' research under the EU's 7th Framework Programme for Research.