Belgium - Minister of Social Affairs and Public Health Presents Policy Declaration on Public Health in Parliament
- 26/03/2025
- News
On Tuesday 18 March 2025, the Minister of Social Affairs and Public Health (the Minister) presented his policy declaration on public health (PD) to the Committee for Health and Equal Opportunities of the federal Chamber of Representatives (see, attachment – Doc 56 0767/009). Not surprisingly, the issues discussed in the PD generally repeat or at times elaborate on the principles contained in the governmental agreement of 31 January 2025 (see, Van Bael & Bellis Life Sciences News and Insights of 4 February 2025).
This also applies to the matters of relevance to the pharmaceutical industry such as market entry incentives for generics and biosimilars, the reform of the reimbursement rules for medicines, the cost reduction of medicines, the assessment and transformation of the Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products, hospitalisation at home, clinical trials, the research and development bioplatform, intellectual property, gender focus, prevention, and data sharing (PD, pp. 14-16 and p. 30).
On medicine shortages, the PD promises more precise and stringent rules that allow for the correct enforcement of the public service obligations. The Minister wants to pursue parties that fail to fulfil their obligation to service the market. Additionally, the Minister will increase the supply transparency by creating a stock monitoring tool that covers the entire supply chain and will build on lessons learned from a pilot project in that area (PD, pp. 14-15). Finally, the Minister will also secure international supply chains to guard against crisis situations (PD, p. 41).
The Minister will concentrate on the rational use of medicines for both budgetary and health reasons (PD, p. 15) and will specifically try and contain the use of antibiotics, benzodiazepines, non-benzodiazepine medicines, opioids, and psychotropic medicines (PD, p. 15 and p. 17).
Lastly, the Minister has ambitious plans to educate patients in health matters, including medicine information and illegal medicines (PD, pp. 27-28).
