BRUSSELS, May 28 (Reuters) – The European Commission said on Thursday it intends to create a permanent stockpile of essential medicines and health equipment to cope with the shortage that has plagued the EU for years and has worsened throughout the pandemic. of COVID-19.
FILE PHOTO: A couple wearing protective face masks walks past the European Commission headquarters as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues in Brussels, Belgium April 23, 2020. REUTERS / Johanna Geron / File Photo
The reserve would be financed with a new health budget worth 9.4 billion euros ($ 10.3 billion) that the European Commission proposed on Wednesday.
The reserve would complement a € 380 million emergency reserve created at the start of the pandemic, after many countries in the bloc faced an acute shortage of face masks, test kits, mechanical respirators, intensive care medicine and other vital items. .
The EU is trying to store disinfectants, reagents for tests and diagnoses, protective equipment and essential medicines, according to an EU document.
The additional funds, which must be approved by EU governments and legislators, would also be used to purchase vaccines, which are often in short supply in the EU and are mostly manufactured outside the bloc.
The Commission said it wants to offer incentives to pharmaceutical companies to develop and produce vaccines in Europe, and to relocate the manufacturing capacity of the drugs and their chemical compounds that are now mostly imported from India and China.
EU lawmakers urged the grants to encourage relocation, but Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides declined to comment on the matter on Thursday.
Kyriakides said the incentives will be addressed in proposals for an EU pharmaceutical strategy slated for later in the year, a timetable that caught the attention of the industry in light of the risks of a second wave of the epidemic in the fall.
In a draft, Parliament also called for the creation of one or more “non-profit European pharmaceutical companies” to manufacture priority drugs.
The United States has also sought to increase the capacity to produce medicines and its raw materials in the country after the pandemic exposed dependence on industry from China and India.
($ 1 = 0.9087 euros)
Information from Francesco Guarascio; edited by Kirsten Donovan, translated by Michael Susin at the Gdansk newsroom
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