'Medicine miles' becoming a concern for European patients

European customers are growing increasingly concerned about the origin of their medicine and expect government to support investment to avoid over dependency on countries outside of Europe.

The findings of the research, conducted by Israeli generics giant Teva Pharmaceutica Industries (NYSE: TEVA), point to the need to rebalance the global pharmaceutical value chain to ensure every region around the world has reliable access to vital medicines.

It comes as the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted problems with global supply chains caused by the manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) being clustered in Asia. While Europe remains strong in producing finished medicines, it has lost its leadership position in active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing in the off-patent generics sector – especially for essential drugs like paracetamol – opening up strategic vulnerabilities.