Europe's Beating Cancer Plan: Driving forces for the security of medical radioisotopes supply

Key points

The EESC:

• highlights that nuclear medicine saves millions of lives and represents a source of great hope for the fight against cancer. The Committee stresses the need to address patients’ needs in Europe and ensure that all of them have equal access to cancer treatment;
• In Europe, ten million diagnosis and therapy procedures per year are based on radiopharmaceuticals. Priority should be given to radionuclide targeted therapies, which are precise and often less harmful than other treatments;
• calls for production incentives ensuring better strategic autonomy in the supply of radioisotopes. Europe is the world leader in the supply of radioisotopes for medicine. At the same time, it has critical dependencies on third countries for key source materials and specific processing operations. Therefore, the Committee calls on the Critical Medicines Alliance to carefully monitor the supply of radioisotopes in Europe and support bolstering industrial competitiveness in this sector;
• requests that due care to be taken to ensure that staff safety and security measures are respected throughout the supply chain and calls for urgent investment in the planning, education and training of the people needed in this sector and in staff mobility.