Adam Niedzielski made the appeal at a Polish-American biotechnology conference in Washington, DC, on Monday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The Polish health minister said: “We in Europe should be independent when it comes to the production of medicines, and so end the dependence on the drugs manufactured in India or China.”
He added: “First the COVID-19 pandemic and now the war in Ukraine have shown that this is a key challenge.”
According to Niedzielski, ending Europe's reliance on products imported from Asia "is one of the top three challenges and lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Boosting resilience to crises
Niedzielski also said that countries must be resilient to crises.
“When we are experiencing crises, and we are experiencing them constantly during the war in Ukraine, we find out that we lack certain ingredients used in the manufacturing of medicines,” the Polish health minister warned.
He added: “The COVID-19 pandemic showed that the supply chains based on manufacturers in India and China weren’t a model that functioned well.”
“The conclusion is that we should work together to make our markets fully secure,” Niedzielski said.
'Poland wants to become regional leader in biotechnology'
Referring to the main topic of the Washington conference, the Polish health minister told reporters that “cooperation with the US is important as Poland seeks to fulfil its ambition of becoming a regional leader in biotechnology,” the PAP news agency reported.
The Washington event, held under the motto “The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create It,” was intended to contribute to Polish-American cooperation in areas such as international policy, security, social affairs and healthcare, with a focus on biotechnology, according to its organizers, the Warsaw-based Kulski Foundation for Polish-American Relations.
Tuesday is day 244 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Source: IAR, PAP