“Access to healthcare should be a priority for the EU institutions and Member States”

Some patients in Europe cannot access proper diagnosis and treatment. Innovation in healthcare does not reach EU Member States in an equal way. Patients with acute or serious diseases are sometimes forced to migrate to EU Member States to find a suitable therapy. Doctors and nurses leave their home country to find better working conditions elsewhere.

 Access to quality healthcare is a basic EU citizen’s rights, yet it is still not a reality for many of us.

Ensuring equal access to quality healthcare should be a priority of the EU institutions too as Member States alone cannot tackle this problem. Besides this, a genuine involvement of stakeholders in EU policy-making is vital to find workable policy solutions to fit real-life needs.

The Patient Access Partnership on Equity of Access to Quality Healthcare will be soon officially launched to tackle this issue. This patient-led network will bring together the patients, the medical community, the industry and policy-makers to move forward on solutions and approaches to access that really work for patients and address the current barriers and inequities.

As a substitute member of the ENVI Committee of the European Parliament I will do my best to put this issue high in the Committee’s healthcare policy agenda. Together with a number of MEP colleagues, I intend to set up an Informal Interest Group on equal access to quality healthcare in the coming months. It will serve as a bridge between the Patient Access Partnership and EU policy-makers to ensure this problem reaches the European institutions and rank high among their priorities.

Andrey Kovatchev

Andrey Kovatchev

Member of the European Parliament - Group of the European People's Party (EPP, Bulgaria)

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