By Maggie Fick
LONDON (Reuters) -AstraZeneca Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot said on Wednesday that just like Europe has stepped up its defence spending it now must do the same and invest more to protect its health sovereignty amid a shifting world order.
Soriot was responding to a Reuters request for comment on a letter by the CEOs of European drugmakers Novartis and Sanofi published on Wednesday in the Financial Times in which they said European price controls on medicines hurt innovation and made the region less attractive, “penalising” innovation.
“Europe spends a substantially lower share of GDP on innovative medicines than the U.S. and, as a result, is falling behind in attracting R&D and manufacturing investments, putting its ability to protect the health of its own people at risk,” Soriot said in a statement.
Despite its heavy spending on medicines and healthcare overall, the United States has the worst health outcomes for key indicators such as life expectancy and infant mortality among countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, though U.S. outcomes for major diseases such as cancer are better than Europe’s.
However, European pharma bosses’ comments show their concern that U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to bring more investment to his country are reducing incentives to invest in Europe.
In January, AstraZeneca, scrapped plans to invest 450 million pounds ($598.46 million) in its vaccine manufacturing plant in England, citing a cut in British government support and has not announced new investments since.
Last November, the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker unveiled a $3.5 billion investment to expand its manufacturing footprint in the U.S. and do more research and development there.
($1 = 0.7519 pounds)
(Reporting by Maggie FickEditing by Jane Merriman, Tomasz Janowski and David Goodman)
