The Health Brief

As this week is European Testing Week, a European campaign that aims to increase testing efforts and promote awareness of the benefits of earlier hepatitis and HIV testing, EURACTIV's health team is talking with Jens Lundgren, Professor of infectious diseases at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.  He has been involved with clinical HIV research for the last 30 years and in this interview he talks about the importance of early diagnosis for HIV patients. 

This week, EURACTIV’s health team talks with Chantal Friebertshäuser, Senior Vice President at Moderna for Europe, the Middle East and Canada. They discuss the end of COVID and the new vaccine they are developing against cancer. 

They also talk about the new facility the biotechnology company recently opened in Madrid, Spain. This new laboratory, equipped with the latest technology, is the biggest end-to-end production hub for Moderna outside the United States. 

This week, EURACTIV’s health team dives into the proposal for a new pharmaceutical legislation and the complicated way ahead. For that, they talk with stakeholders working on health policy at the EU level about their priorities and main concerns. 

This week, EURACTIV’s health team dives into endocrine disruptors and the effect these chemicals can have on our hormonal system. They talk with Doctor Angel Nadal, professor of physiology at the University Miguel Hernandez in Spain, about the current framework and what else can be done at the EU level.  

This week, EURACTIV’s journalist Marta Iraola talks about the movie ‘The Whale’  with Jacqueline Bowman-Busato, head of policy at the European Association for the Study of Obesity. They focus on the controversies about its portrayal of obesity and the reception among the patient community. 

This week, EURACTIV’s journalist Giedrė Peseckytė is talking with a Polish pro-abortion activist Justyna Wydrzynska who got sentenced in mid-March to eight months of community service for sharing abortion pills with another woman back in 2020. *The interview was conducted on 23 March. 

Marking world Tuberculosis day (24 March) we are talking with two Ukrainians about how Ukrainians are fighting not only Russia's invasion but also one of the highest incidences of TB cases in the European region. 

This week, EURACTIV’s health team explores the outstanding revision of the EU framework on substances of human origins (SoHo) together with Annemette Arndal-Lauritzen, CEO of the European Sperm Bank, with a focus on the revision of the EU rules for sperm donation.

This week, EURACTIV's health journalists Marta Iraola and Gerardo Fortuna dig into the troubled implementation of the new framework for medical devices in Europe which entered into force in 2021. When developers of medical devices started experiencing problems in meeting the deadlines for implementing the key rules of the new regulation, the EU lawmakers decided to postpone the application of certain provisions of these new rules. To get a better grasp of what happened, we spoke to the European Commission spokesperson in charge of health Stefan de Keersmaecker, the policy officer at the European Patients’ Forum (EPF) Julie Spony, and the CEO of MedTech Europe Oliver Bisazza. 

This week, EURACTIV’s journalists Clara Bauer and Gerardo Fortuna sat with the EU’s health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides to talk about women’s health on the occasion of International Women’s Day. The EU health chief also gave some anticipations on what is coming up next in the EU’s health policy agenda.