A new chair for the public health committee

Editorial word: A new chair for the public health committee

By Clara Bauer-Babef 

EU lawmakers from the European Parliament’s subcommittee on public health (SANT) on Tuesday morning (28 November) elected their new chair: Polish MEP Adam Jarubas (EPP), to replace former MEP and chair Bartosz Arłukowicz (also EPP), who was elected in October to the Polish national parliament. 

“I would like to give a new impulse to the subcommittee,” said the newly-elected chair after his election. 

Jarubas outlined his key priorities for his term: “European pharmaceutical sovereignty”, “securing common health standards across the EU” and “advancing the European Health Union”.

The new chair also outlined how he wanted to fight “health inequalities between countries and within, between densely populated urban areas and remote ones, such as rural communities”. 

However, the SANT committee, created in February 2023, has no legislative power – that lies instead with the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI). Despite his enthusiasm for a wide range of ambitious measures to undertake in his mandate, in concrete terms, Jarubas’ power and influence will be limited.

“We should use the social support momentum gained after the COVID-19 pandemic, where a common European response proved to be more effective than single-state efforts or cost-increasing competition among EU countries,” concluded Jarubas. 

The next SANT committee meeting will take place during the December plenary session in Strasbourg on December, 14. 

EU News

• • EHDS gets stamp of approval in the committees
  • The mysterious case of the medicine access and innovation study continues
  • Head of EU drugs agency-to-be reiterates dangers of increased drugs use
  • New HIV report shows that the EU needs to accelerate its approach to reach 2030 targets.
• EHDS gets stamp of approval in the committees. On Tuesday (28 November), MEPs in the European Parliament’s public health (ENVI) and civil liberties (LIBE) committees adopted the report on the European Health Data Space (EHDS) detailing their position on the file. The report was adopted with a wide majority, as 95 MEPs voted in favour, 18 voted against and 10 abstained from voting.
  “Our text managed to find the right balance between a patient’s right to privacy and the enormous potential of digital health data, which is meant to improve healthcare quality and produce healthcare innovation,” said co-rapporteur and Italian MEP Annalisa Tardino (ID) in a statement. Her fellow co-rapporteur, Croatian MEP Tomislav Sokol (EPP) emphasised that “the EHDS will empower citizens by enhancing healthcare at a national and cross-border level, and will facilitate the responsible sharing of health data – boosting research and innovation in the EU.”
  The report is scheduled for a vote in the December plenary session.
• The mysterious case of the medicine access and innovation study continues. There are still no clear answers about what happened with the publishing and subsequent withdrawal of the study “Improving Public Access to Medicines and Promoting Pharmaceutical Innovation” from the Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA). The STOA secretariat took responsibility for the withdrawal, although the move appears to have breached STOA’s official rules. During the panel meeting on Thursday (23 November), even more questions were raised demanding greater clarity on the process – in particular, whether intervention from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), Europe’s largest pharmaceutical lobby organisation, played a role in the study’s withdrawal.

Amalie Holmgaard Mersh has more here.

• Head of EU drugs agency-to-be reiterates dangers of increased drugs availability. Ahead of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) evolving into a fully-fledged agency in July 2024, the director of the centre, Alexis Goosdeel, visited the Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) on Monday (27 November) to update them on the progress and discuss the increased use and availability of illicit drugs in the EU.
  The director assured the MEPs that the work programme for the drugs agency would be adopted in a few weeks. On top of that, there is still work to be done to properly define their role and how they will distinguish themselves from other agencies such as Europol. The EMCDDA already has an early warning system on drugs, but Goosdeel promised further efforts to monitor and make sure information about the effects of illicit drugs reaches health professionals. Then comes efforts to support member states’ response and crisis management as well as proposals for two big conferences in October and November 2024 about addiction and drug-related violence, respectively.
  “We never had so many drugs available or produced in Europe, as it is the case today,” Goosdeel said, later adding that the scale and the complexity of the production capacity in the EU is growing. With increased availability comes larger health risks particularly associated with synthetic drugs, such as amphetamines, methamphetamine, as well as synthetic cannabinoids and opioids.

Read the European Drug Report 2023 or watch the LIBE debate here.

• New HIV report shows that the EU needs to accelerate its approach to reach 2030 targets. A new report presented by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) (28 November) gathering data from 2022, shows that the EU is still far from complying with the targets set by the United Nations aiming to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. The UN set the so-called 95-95-95 targets for three reference categories: the percentage of people living with HIV that are diagnosed, out of the diagnosed people those on antiretroviral treatment and out of the people on treatment those virally suppressed. In practice, this would mean that 86% of all people living with HIV should be virally suppressed while the EU average is still 78%, with differences ranging from Slovenia just on the target to Malta not reaching 40%. To accelerate the pace, the report identifies the main areas in which work is needed: focusing on prevention, increasing accessible testing, and ending stigma and discrimination.

News from the Capitals

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A citizens’ initiative supported by half a million Poles regarding the return of a state-funded in vitro fertilisation (IVF) programme is dividing lawmakers despite the increasing problem caused by infertility. Read more.

[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]

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