PharmaTimes | Lynne Taylor
Germany has come top of a new
international league table in terms of access to medicines for patient
organisations, with Italy and France in joint second place and the UK coming
fourth.
The survey, conducted by
PatientView, asked patient groups in 12 countries or regions about their
ability to gain access to medicines, for example, by influencing the health
technology assessment (HTA) process in their country. The fifth-best access,
after that in the UK, was found in the Nordic countries, followed by Canada in
sixth place.
The US and central and
south America are next, in joint seventh place, followed by the Netherlands and
Australasia, joint ninth, then Spain in eleventh place and finally, placed
twelfth, with the worst access, is Eastern Europe.
The survey also asked
patient groups representing individual diseases and conditions how able they
are to influence access-to-medicines processes, and the top performers in this
table are groups representing people with HIV/AIDS. Only 19% of these patient
groups now regard access to medicines to be a hurdle, compared to 38% which
reported that they did so in PatientView’s last survey, in 2012.
Next in terms of access
to medicines were groups representing patients with circulatory conditions,
followed by: mental health – third place; diabetes and rheumatological – joint
fourth; neurological – sixth; rare diseases and respiratory – joint seventh;
cancer – ninth; endocrine – tenth; and gastrointestinal – eleventh.
HIV/AIDS groups are also
the most proficient of all patient organisations; they are particularly skilled
at raising awareness of the need for new treatments, and they are more ready
than other types of patient groups to present themselves as a unified force,
says the survey.
In contrast, a large
proportion of cancer patient groups find access to medicines to be a problem,
with 41% reporting this to be the case in 2014 compared with 28% in 2012. Many
cancer patient groups today clearly feel unable to negotiate better access to
medicines, and incapable of influencing government healthcare policies which
reject the most modern cancer therapies on cost grounds. These groups are also
hindered by the fragmentation of the cancer sector of the patient movement,
which dilutes the public messages and campaigns of the individual – and
sometimes competing – cancer patient groups, the report comments.
However, the survey’s
examination of which patient groups have the best relationships with government
policymakers puts cancer groups in the top spot, followed by rare diseases and
gastrointestinal in joint second, and HIV/AIDS groups down in fifth place.
These findings show that patient groups do not have to secure good
relationships with government to get the leverage needed to influence access to
medicines – in fact, the opposite can be true, says PatientView.