Germany has come top of a new international league table in terms of access to medicines for patient organisations, with Italy and France in joint second place and the UK coming fourth.

The survey, conducted by PatientView, asked patient groups in 12 countries or regions about their ability to gain access to medicines, for example, by influencing the health technology assessment (HTA) process in their country. The fifth-best access, after that in the UK, was found in the Nordic countries, followed by Canada in sixth place. 

The US and central and south America are next, in joint seventh place, followed by the Netherlands and Australasia, joint ninth, then Spain in eleventh place and finally, placed twelfth, with the worst access, is Eastern Europe.

The survey also asked patient groups representing individual diseases and conditions how able they are to influence access-to-medicines processes, and the top performers in this table are groups representing people with HIV/AIDS. Only 19% of these patient groups now regard access to medicines to be a hurdle, compared to 38% which reported that they did so in PatientView’s last survey, in 2012.

For more details, go to: http://www.pharmatimes.com/Article/14-09-15/Germany_tops_global_patient_table_for_access_to_medicines.aspx