(31 January 2022) – According to the head of the Commission’s service dealing with health, investments are needed to avoid a situation where some patients’ needs are not covered because they suffer from a rare condition.
The market will not regulate itself when it comes to finding solutions to rare diseases, said Sandra Gallina, director at the European Commission’s DG SANTE, adding there is pressure to kickstart innovation on orphan drugs.
“I’m not convinced about the fact that the market will take care of itself, meaning that we have a lot of pressure to find a solution for these unmet needs or rare diseases. So let me say, [there is] definitely [a need for] incentives for innovation,” said Gallina at a webinar on Monday (24 January).
She said that degenerative diseases had crawled up the list in the stakeholders’ consultations and that today there is less acceptance of limited treatments just because someone suffers from a rare disease. (Euractiv)