How new EU incentives will help all patients get the best treatments

Medical advances can bring life-changing improvements, especially for those suffering from long term conditions. Every year, new treatments are found that work better or have fewer side effects.

But not everyone gets to benefit from these changes. Often the priority for distribution is large high-value markets, at the expense of those living in smaller population areas.

Wayne Zammit lives in Malta. When he was a boy, he had a dream.

"I grew up loving cars," he says. "One of the things I always wanted was to work in something I love. But unfortunately, due to my skin condition, to my eczema, due to the dust, and the things that you do are all very messy, and it is very easy to get infections, and things like this. That is something that I had to give up on very quickly."

Wayne was diagnosed with severe eczema when he was 4. Problems soon piled up.

"When I went to do my first passport, at that point, I was quite young," he says. "In my photo, my lips were completely broken. So I was like a mini-joker, to a certain extent. And I had a lot of flare-ups around my eyes. Even a cracked eyelid. And my ears would be very puffy and red. And they obviously would not want to take a photo due to identification reasons; and even for me. This is a disease that affects the skin, it is our biggest organ. I've had days when I could not move my neck around. I´ve had days when for me to get off a chair, I would want to cry. I have days when my clothes are stuck to my skin, due to open wounds"

A cocktail of medicines now keeps the disease at bay. But periodically they cause side effects like nausea and high blood pressure. When Wayne stops them, his body flares up again.

Yet the injectable prescription medication that doctors think would be the