Health workers, activists, and access to medicines advocates have gathered in Frankfurt on October 22-23 for the 2nd Public Pharma Conference. The event builds on roughly two years of work by the Public Pharma for Europe Coalition, which aims to construct an alternative vision for the region’s pharmaceutical landscape – and to strengthen the links needed to turn that vision into reality.

“When we had the first conference in 2024, we realized there are many people practically working on this topic who shared a similar vision and a similar goal,” Frauke Heller from medico international told BreakThrough News. 

The new conference aims to open the space to even more advocates, she added, in a region where the Big Pharma lobby remains extremely influential.

Read more: Public pharma infrastructure could give the world access to a treasure trove of medicines

The first day focused on the coalition’s expansion and the shifting global landscape it faces, including growing concerns about the availability and affordability of medicines across Europe. 

Speakers – including commons activist Gaëlle Krikorian, Tim Joye, president of Medics for the People (MPLP-GVHV), researcher Tineke Kleinhoudt-Vliek, and Jan Wintgens, coordinator of the People’s Health Movement (PHM) Public Pharma program in Europe – detailed how a system reliant on Big Pharma is deepening these access problems.

Their interventions also highlighted that alternatives already exist. Kleinhoudt-Vliek pointed to dozens of existing examples of drug research, development, and innovation projects in Europe alone that are supported by the public sector in different ways. “This used to happen only in ‘market-failure’ areas, but it’s now moving into profitable drugs too,” she pointed out.

Austerity is exacerbating access to medicines issues

The conference recognized that rising drug prices in Europe have sharpened the visibility of this issue compared to earlier years, when social security systems were still able to secure access to medicines for patients in the region. That is less the case today, as Big Pharma companies set exorbitant prices for new products – and social security systems themselves are undermined by austerity.

The effects are felt across the region, with Joye and Krikorian turning to examples from Belgium and France. In Belgium, Joye said, the case of a family forced to fundraise close to €2 million for a spinal muscular atrophy injection for a baby reinforced MPLP’s efforts to envision a different pharma system. In France, current drug prices have been driving both patients and pharmacists “out of their minds,” Krikorian emphasized, prompting them to become more critical of the whole system.

Read more: Listening through the social stethoscope: MPLP’s health workers redefine care in Belgium

These developments cannot be separated from the situation affecting the world today, related to the weakening position of the United States, speakers and participants seemed to agree.

“If we compare the world in March 2024 to today, the difference is enormous,” Joye said, citing a recent decision by drug giant GSK to cut 1,200 jobs from its 8,000-strong operations in Belgium. “This is not a company in financial difficulties: they’re cutting jobs because they’re planning to shift part of their operations to the US under the influence of the Trump administration.”

People in Europe are growing increasingly scared of war, due to their governments’ arms race, he added, but also of losing their jobs. “Politicians using this fear to increase the power of the multinationals instead of changing the system.”

Experiences from socialism and the Global South

As the European Public Pharma coalition continues to grow its ranks, it remains attentive to experiences from the past, including the public production of vaccines in formerly socialist states of Eastern Europe – as presented by David Franco from Public Pharma for Europe and Goran Jeras from the Cooperative for Ethical Financing.

But the platform is also looking toward practical examples of orienting pharmaceutical research and production away from a profit-making model. This includes the work of Cuban scientists, who have achieved groundbreaking breakthroughs despite the ongoing blockade imposed by the US, as well as medical research institutes in Brazil and efforts to establish public production of therapies in Canada.

Gerardo Guillén from the China-Cuba Biotechnology Innovation Center linked the island’s breakthroughs – including interferon therapy, innovative treatments for diabetic foot, and COVID-19 medicines – to the people-centered healthcare erected following the revolution. 

Cuba’s persistent research and innovation cannot be separated from Fidel Castro‘s appeal for a science-based revolution – a science that serves the needs of the people – Guillén pointed out.

Read more: Humanity owes Cuba: unilateral coercive measures and the politics of punishment

Another example came from Martin Häuer of the Open Source Imaging Initiative (OSI²), who walked participants through existing efforts to build MR imaging machines using open-source tools. For now, the project team was able to assemble functioning prototypes for around €20,000 – with reassembly in low-income health systems like Ghana’s projected at around €24,000.

This amount represents roughly 10% of the standard market price of an MRI: significantly increasing the chance of the technology becoming more widely accessible and showing how significant the impact of these initiatives can be globally.

People’s Health Dispatch is a monthly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

Doctors and healthcare workers gathered in parallel to the World Medical Association (WMA) General Assembly in Rotterdam on October 8-10, demanding the suspension of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) over its breaches of medical ethics throughout the Gaza genocide. 

Activists held mobilizations warning against the IMA’s attempts to obscure attacks on Palestinian health workers and infrastructure. These actions included a petition demanding the organization’s suspension from the WMA signed by nearly 6,850 health professionals.

Read more: On Nakba anniversary, health workers call for boycott of Israeli Medical Association

“The petition demands that the IMA is suspended by the WMA for its gross violations of medical ethics over decades, concerning Palestinian patients and healthcare services and the complicity of Israeli doctors in the starvation, torture and medical neglect of Palestinian prisoners,” the IMA Out! coalition stated.

The coalition also called upon medical associations to follow the example of the South African Medical Association, the British Medical Association, and the Turkish Medical Association in severing ties with the IMA.

81 empty scrubs at the WMA assembly

On Saturday, October 10, 81 health workers simultaneously removed their scrubs and hung them in a line facing the WMA assembly. Each was marked with the name of a Palestinian healthcare worker currently held in illegal Israeli detention.

“These scrubs should not be empty,” said general practitioner Mejrem Ahmetaj from Artsen voor Gaza (Doctors for Gaza) in the Netherlands. “Our colleagues belong with their patients, not in Israeli prisons.”

The campaign to suspend the IMA over its breaches of medical ethics has been developing for months. In June this year, a report in The Lancet reported that a petition launched by the People’s Health Movement (PHM) to hold the IMA accountable collected over 1,100 signatures. Working together with other organizations and networks, including chapters of Healthcare Workers For Palestine and Teva boycott groups, the initiative was able to expand.

The IMA: more than a bystander

Since October 2023, at least 1,700 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and many more remain imprisoned in horrifying conditions in Israeli detention centers. Among them is Kamal Adwan Hospital Director Hussam Abu Safiya, whose mistreatment and imprisonment have caused international outcry.

These crimes have been extensively documented by UN experts and human rights associations, yet the IMA – which represents over 90% of Israeli physicians – took no action. Instead, some of its leading figures backed unfounded claims that Gaza’s hospitals are used for military purposes.

Read more: New PHM global coordinator: “Palestine is a symbol of resistance for a new world”

“The IMA has said and done nothing about these war crimes against health workers, patients and hospitals,” said Jonathan Fluxman from IMA Out!. 

Ahmetaj added that the IMA is not a bystander. “It defends these attacks and blocks international condemnation while Palestinian healthcare is being destroyed,” the physician said. “That is not medical neutrality. That is complicity.”

Hind Rajab Foundation: IMA involved “in the death, torture, and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees”

The protest coincided with a legal action initiated by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF). On October 7, the foundation announced it had called upon the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the involvement of the IMA, the Israeli Ministry of Health, Ministry of Defense, and medical professionals “in the death, torture, and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees held at the Sde Teiman detention facility since October 7, 2023.”

The legal submission addressed the participation of Israeli medics in crimes perpetrated at Sde Teiman’s field hospital. There, health workers and detainees documented abuses spurring from directives issued by the Israeli Ministry of Health in December 2023.

According to the Hind Rajab Foundation, the Ministry of Health guidance instructed medical staff to treat prisoners while blindfolded and handcuffed and required them to sign medical documentation using only their professional titles. It also directed them to restrict transfers to civilian hospitals and authorized forced medical treatment without protections.

“By November 2025, at least 29 detainees had died at Sde Teiman as a result of physical violence, medical neglect, or both,” the organization wrote. The IMA did not initiate any disciplinary proceedings against members involved in these practices – and even used international journals as platforms to obscure them.

“The evidence shows that medical participation in torture and abuse at Sde Teiman was structural,” Natacha Bracq of the Hind Rajab Foundation said. “The Israeli Ministry of Health built the field hospital, dictated the terms of medical treatment; doctors served under Military Police authority rather than the Medical Corps; and a professional association provided ethical cover.”

Read more: Israeli destruction of Gaza’s healthcare is a blueprint for future imperialist wars

“Israeli physicians abandoned their neutrality when they agreed to treat patients in chains and erase what was done to them,” Dyab Abou Jahjah from the same organization added. “The WMA must answer why an association that provided institutional cover for torture is still welcome at its table.”

People’s Health Dispatch is a monthly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

Health is always a prominent topic at Belgium’s ManiFiesta, a two-day festival organized by the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB) in the beginning of September. Discussions range from the organization of health services or workshops led by progressive health organizations like Medics for the People (MPLP-GVHV) and Viva Salud. This September, the program covered local priorities such as health coverage and hospital reform – along with Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza’s healthcare system and the threat of militarization across Europe.

Health workers should oppose rearmament

Addressing the question of why health workers should be concerned by Europe’s armament drive, Juliette Mattijsen of the People’s Health Movement (PHM), Nadja Rakowitz of the Association of Democratic Doctors (vdää*) in Germany, and Tim Joye of Medics for the People emphasized the different ways hospitals, health centers, and medical studies are being reshaped. 

Not only are governments imposing cuts on health budgets to enable increased defense spending, as Mattijsen illustrated – some are structurally changing what the health system is supposed to be about.

Read more: Militarization is spreading through Germany’s health sector

As the Merz administration in Germany rushes to build Europe’s mightiest army, Rakowitz explained, it is tabling plans for underground hospitals and an overhaul of triage systems. The goal of these reforms is supposedly to ensure wounded soldiers – from a battlefield that still only exists in the imagination of regional politicians – are cared for swiftly and returned to combat as soon as possible. In Belgium, Joye added, plans are being circulated to introduce war medicine into medical school curricula, and professional congresses have made this their topic of choice.

If European governments have their way, the speakers warned, health systems in the region will increasingly lose their focus on patients and add further strain on service provision. To prevent this, the panel suggested, health workers themselves – nurses, doctors, dentists, and others – must mobilize and actively oppose this dangerous trend.

In Palestine, medics provide more than health care

At another panel hosted by Viva Salud, the focus shifted to Palestine. Gaza’s health services have been militarized by the Israeli occupation, which has turned health infrastructure and workers into direct targets.

Sama Jaber of the Awda Association and Hanne Bosselaers, a Medics for the People general practitioner who participated in the 2025 solidarity flotillas to Gaza, focused their interventions on the relevance of organizing and providing healthcare under occupation.

In Palestine, Jaber pointed out, the formation of medical practitioners is a collective feat. By persevering in their work during a genocide, health workers in Gaza are now giving back to the communities who accompanied them along the way. “Being a health worker in Palestine today means sharing genocide conditions, but also upholding the right to health,” she said.

Read more: In Palestine, healthcare is also a form of resistance

For Bosselaers, the steadfastness of Palestinian comrades has been an inspiration since her first visits to Gaza approximately 15 years ago and the twinning process she supported with a health center in Beit Hanoun. Today, she emphasized, Israeli attacks have leveled Beit Hanoun to the ground – yet health workers have not given up their work.

Doctors and other health workers in Europe need to recognize this unbreakable spirit, Bosselaers said, and support their peers by joining movements at home. This should mean standing by Palestinians’ demands for liberation, she added, but also joining networks struggling against other forms of attack on healthcare: opposing commercialization, austerity, and militarization.

Call to support boycott, divestment and sanctions

Health workers around the world should direct their efforts into directly supporting the health system in Palestine, the panelists pointed out. This does not mean replacing hospitals with large international NGO operations or flying in and taking over, Bosselaers insisted, as is often seen in humanitarian medicine. Instead, she and Jaber suggested, the priority should be mobilizing against the occupation and campaigning for an end to Israel’s impunity.

In this, they echoed Palestinian physician and political leader Mustafa Barghouti, who addressed the panel through a video message. Barghouti invited health workers in Europe to stand firm in their support of Gaza, particularly by supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns. By doing so, he said, they will also recognize the efforts of their peers in Palestine, who are doing more than healthcare today, “helping people persevere in their steadfastness.”

As the genocide continues, Barghouti insisted, health workers in occupied Palestine know their efforts are directed at supporting people in remaining on their land – starting from the most common health procedures. “If you help a woman safely deliver a baby,” he said, “you’re helping her stay in Palestine.”

People’s Health Dispatch is a monthly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and to subscribe to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.