Health security dominated the penultimate day at the European Health Forum Gastein, with calls for Europe to be better prepared to protect health infrastructure. — Parliament’s environment committee backs an opinion on the Biotech Act supporting a one-year patent extension. — Europe’s response to the U.S. most-favored-nation policy was a hot topic at Gastein, with France’s new pharma deal stealing the spotlight. Welcome to Friday’s Morning Health Care! It’s been a big week at Gastein and it only cost attendees a bout of food poisoning, burnout and one unlucky Italian getting lost in the woods, spending the night by a waterfall before being rescued by helicopter.
This year also bids farewell to Clemens Martin Auer, who hands over the Gastein presidency to Nick Fahy, director of the health and care research group at RAND Europe. Mark your calendars: Our weekly health care calendar lands in your inbox on Thursday. You can also go online to export and plan your week or suggest your own event.
Get in touch: [email protected], [email protected]. Follow us on X: @chiappa_claudia, @domgiannini_ GEAR UP: Europe needs to better prepare to protect health infrastructure, delegates heard, as health security dominated the penultimate day at the European Health Forum Gastein. Spread out: Petter Iversen, chair of NATO’s Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services, said there were different ways Europe could protect health infrastructure, which continues to be under attack in Ukraine.
Hiding hospitals: One option is to move hospitals into underground facilities to protect them from attacks, he said. If you’re building a parking cellar, maybe you should have enough power or electricity, and also water supplies, so you can actually build a kind of hospital in there.” Eastern Europe is already experiencing increasing threats from Russia, with drones and cyberattacks now frequent events, Iversen said. Countries closer to Russia had good plans in place, he said.
Read more about what Iversen and Habicht said on health security and Ukraine here. More information about political advertising here. INFORMAL MEETING: Health ministers met in Dublin on Thursday where they discussed tobacco and nicotine pouches, the Biotech Act, medical devices reform and cardiovascular health.
On tobacco: Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi said the Commission remained committed to publishing a comprehensive review of tobacco legislation, including on advertising rules, this year and that there will be a focus on nicotine addiction. We’re close: Forthcoming legislation would address vapes and heated tobacco products; their use being twice as high among young people than the broader population, Várhelyi said. It is important the tobacco products directive is revised to address nicotine addiction “so that we can deal with the cross-border element of this and create a genuinely harmonized system,” added Irish Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill who joined Várhelyi at the press conference.
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