PREFACE

Health is sometimes like trust: hard to gain but easy to lose.

We know that a life without diseases is never self-evident. But COVID-19 has made sure that everyone has been confronted with the facts.
A new virus not only turned healthcare upsidedown, but also our society and the economy within a few months.

It is a long road back to a more normal and perhaps a different life indeed. The good news is that in 2021, step by step, good, safe corona vaccines will become available for continually more world citizens.

The corona crisis and the call for vaccines has underlined the pharmaceutical sector’s essential role. Good medicines and vaccines are the invisible mechanism that keeps society running. If they are still lacking when there is a new virus, as in the first months of the corona crisis, it is immediately clear how vital they are.

Our Medicines Monitor, intended to provide clear and illustrative insight into the costs and benefits of medicines, of course contains infographics about corona vaccines. Within a few months after the first corona outbreak, there were already more than one hundred vaccines and medicines in development against this virus. That unprecedented wave of innovation emphasises the sector’s strength, while worldwide literally billions of people – healthy and sick – are eagerly looking forward to the first vaccines and medicines.

Let us not forget that, in the meantime, the “regular” medicine development also continues. Diseases such as cancer and dementia, but also thousands of rare diseases, are still unrelenting. They require better treatment than we now have. Fortunately, there are still many innovations to come. For example, more than one thousand gene and cell therapies. This Medicines Monitor also contains more information about this subject.

I would like to emphasise one subject more specifically here. Innovative medicines that get stuck along the way to market are of no use to patients. For example, because there are unnecessarily long procedures.
Or because the physicians exclude them in their guidelines. That is an area where much more can be improved before we can call our country the European leader in “access to medicines”. A great ambition, which we formulated in the Future Agenda for Medicines for the period from 2021 to 2025.

This Medicines Monitor is based on independent sources. It is a valuable source for anyone who wants to be involved in the medicine debate and policy based on facts.
Highly recommended!

Gerard Schouw

Director Association Innovative Medicines