Commission assessment shows the need to reinforce resilience of critical medicines supply chains

The Commission's Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) has presented to the Critical Medicines Alliance (CMA) the main findings of  a technical report assessing the supply chain vulnerabilities for critical medicines. This report will serve as a basis for further action to reinforce security of supply of a first tranche of 11 critical medicines from the Union list of critical medicines. It will help the Alliance recommending possible actions to anticipate, prevent and address shortages of critical medicines, in line with its key mandate.

The report concludes that there is need to enhance resilience by diversifying sources of supply, enhancing production capacity, and developing robust risk management frameworks to handle economic and market variability effectively. It offers invaluable input to help the CMA, EMA, the Commission and Member States to better address potential shortages of the concerned medicines.

Today's report is part of the Commission's ongoing work on addressing shortages of medicines. To ensure continued availability of medicines and enhance security of supply, the Commission adopted a Communication in October 2023 and put forward a broad set of short and longer term actions, focusing on the most critical medicines. The Union list of critical medicines was published, featuring over 200 active substances deemed critical based on therapeutic indications and the availability of suitable alternatives. Today's report focuses on 11 of them.

More information available on the technical report here.

(For more information: Stefan De Keersmaecker – Tel.: +32 2 298 46 80; Anna Gray – Tel.: +32 2 298 08 73)