Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen

Whether you live in Bucharest, Barcelona or Brussels – we all share the same hope of living a long and healthy life.

But in reality, there are big discrepancies between patient access to medicines from one European country to another. In Romania, which I visited this week for the first time, patients often wait considerably longer, often several years, for access to new medicines versus other European countries. We can do better than that.

As industry, we are willing to do our part. What deeply worries me is that the European Commission’s proposal in the ongoing revision of the EU’s general pharmaceutical legislation will be a step backwards and mean that some European patients’ access to #innovative medicines will become even worse than it is today.

Despite that, I am leaving #Romania optimistic after meeting officials to discuss how to get the right result for Europe and Europeans. I believe that the country can play a key role in driving this discussion given its great representation within the EU Parliament. I have also been inspired by the way authorities, the medical community, patient associations, and industry work together to seek dialogue, partnerships and secure better access to care.

I concluded the trip with a town hall with our Novo Nordisk Romania colleagues. I am impressed by their ambition and drive for excellence in serving almost 500,000 patients! Romania, a warm “multumesc” for two wonderful days!

Despite COVID-19, our performance was satisfying and I want to thank my colleagues in Novo Nordisk around the world for their resilience and flexibility. Thanks also to our many partners for your continued collaboration both within our traditional sphere of serious chronic diseases and in the fight against this new pandemic. Let’s continue to work together and we’ll emerge stronger from these challenging times. You can read about our Q1 performance at https://lnkd.in/dx-YCnT

Today I had the immense pleasure of welcoming His Majesty the King of Belgium to our Copenhagen headquarters. 
 
Together we discussed upskilling of the workforce and the importance of lifelong learning. We also had an opportunity to show how Novo Nordisk is working with new technologies as part of our own training curriculum.
 
I hope that today's meeting planted a strong seed for future collaboration and knowledge sharing between Denmark and Belgium. #collaboration #future #learning