Availability of medicines in the European Union: results from the EURO-Medicines project

Objective: There is at present no comprehensive directory of medicines avai lable in European countries. Stich a directory would be valuable to policy analysts, clinicians, regulatory agencies, pharmaceutical companies and con sumer groups. The aim of this project was to compile such a directory of al l medicines marketed in each of the European Union member countries. Methods: Lists of medicines for each country, compiled from several nationa l sources, classified by Anatomical-Chemical-Therapeutic (ATC) code. Census date was late 1998. Results: A comprehensive directory was created using data from 14 of the 15 European Union countries. Numbers of trade names and of active ingredients varied widely, from Germany with 18,554 and 1973, respectively, to Denmark with 1915 and 1016, respectively. In individual therapeutic areas, there w ere variations in the numbers of active ingredients available: the least va riation between countries was in antineoplastic medicines (ATC code L, maxi mum number available in any country 101, minimum 60) and wider variation in alimentary (ATC code A, maximum 256, minimum 103) or cardiovascular (ATC c ode C, maximum 269, minimum 112). Only 7% of all the active ingredients wer e available in all the countries studied. The Scandinavian countries had th e greatest proportion of active ingredients (60%) available in all other co untries. Each country had a number of active ingredients available only in that country - Italy had the largest number of these. Conclusions: The directory illustrates the wide variations in the availabil ity of medicines across the European Union. The range of drugs available in each country represents differences in regulatory and market policies, as well as cultural and historic differences. This directory lends itself to m any further analyses.