The need for new guidelines for developing medicines for children has resulted from the entry into force in January 2007 of EU Regulation EC No 1901/2006 (the 'Paediatric Regulation'), whose objective is to improve the health of children in Europe by facilitating the development and availability of children's medicines, ensuring they are of high quality and improving the availability of information on their use. This will mean a lot of new rules

Swedish chemicals agency Kemi has announced it wants more action on the use chemicals in consumer goods in Europe. Its newly published strategy follows on from its Action plan for a toxin free everyday environment (commissioned by the Swedish government and published last March) and calls for more information to be made available on substances used in consumer goods, and for manufacturers to substitute harmful ingredients. Kemi says that the way

The European Respiratory Society presented its priorities for respiratory medicine for the next decade on the 6th of September at the European Parliament. Pim de Boer from the Netherlands Astma Fonds and the whole EFA board took part as representatives of the patient community, as the launch coincided with EFA board meeting in Brussels. The key messages for policy makers are: 97% of resources are spent on care and only 3% on prevention; with the

  On 16 & 17 June in London, EFA board member Lina Buzermaniene attended a joint meeting of the European Medicines Agency‘s (EMA) Patients and Consumers Working Party (PCWP) and Healthcare Professionals' Working Group (HCP WG), and the second stakeholder forum on the implementation of the new pharmacovigilance legislation, to become applicable in July 2012 to improve patient safety through better prevention, detection and assessment of

Breda Flood, President of EFA, has been invited to become a member of the steering group for a new European Commission campaign entitled 'Ex-smokers are unstoppable'. The campaign was launched by the EC DG for Health and Consumers (SANCO) on the 16th of June this year, in order to encourage young adults in the EU – especially young males in the 25 to 34 age group – to stop smoking. The campaign is the successor to a previous EU initiative "HELP

On the 16th of September, the pan-European AirPROM project – in which EFA is partnering, and with the European Lung Foundation (ELF) co-leading on project dissemination to patients and public – launched a new website designed to give the general public and healthcare professionals the chance to learn more about the study. AirPROM is a five-year EU- funded project, which aims to develop personalised treatments for people with asthma and chronic

EFA Executive Officer Susanna Palkonen spoke on ‘New networks, new technologies, new patient’ in the annual conference of the European Federation of Medical Informatics in Oslo at the end of August. Her message was that all IT health solutions – eHealth – must serve the real needs of users, including patients, and involve users in their development. It is clear that there is a willingness to bring this about, but know-how is not widespread.

EFA Vice president Christine Rolland was invited to speak from the perspective of older patients with respiratory diseases as a response to the Polish Presidency’s representative presentation on their priorities at a conference of the European Patients’ Forum in Warsaw in June. The conference examined the rights and needs, respect, dignity and quality of life of older patients and their carers in the context of the challenges confronting health

Following the success of the first EFA COPD expert workshop in the European Parliament in Brussels on June 29 – attended by COPD patients and their representatives, medical experts, MEPs from the main European political parties and representatives from the European Commission – EFA is pleased to announce the publication of the 1st EFA COPD Project newsletter summarizing the outcomes of the workshop. In addition to this, an article written by

EFA is very pleased to announce that Poland, which took over the rotating presidency of the EU Council in July, will prioritise children’s allergy and respiratory diseases during its 6 month stint at the helm of the EU, in a welcome attempt to advance the prioritisation of this disease area across Europe and overseas. The Presidency's focus on respiratory diseases and allergy forms part of its broader aim to mitigate inequalities in health protection