Rare Diseases: Medical Treatments

(asked on 11th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that all rare disease patients in the UK have access to licenced treatments as soon as possible after approval by the European Medicines Agency.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 24th November 2020

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has taken steps to recognise, for two years, future European Medicines Agency decisions for medicine licences including for rare diseases approved through the centralised authorisation procedure from January 2021 and provide United Kingdom licences with no additional assessment.

The Government has also established the Early Access to Medicines Scheme, which will continue to give patients with seriously debilitating conditions prompt access to medicines that do not yet have a marketing authorisation, when there is a clear unmet medical need.

Reticulating Splines