EMA's Pharmacovigilance and Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) elects new Chair

11 July 2018

Sabine Straus from the Netherlands to begin three-year mandate from 3 September 2018

At its July 2018 meeting, the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) elected Sabine Straus from the Netherlands as its new Chair, for a three-year mandate starting in September 2018. She will replace June Raine, Director of Vigilance and Risk Management of Medicines at the United Kingdom's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), who will retire as Chair in September 2018, having served the maximum of two 3-year mandates.

Sabine Straus is a member of the Dutch national competent authority – the Medicines Evaluation Board (MEB), with strong expertise in pharmacovigilance. She has been a member of the PRAC since 2012, when the Committee was established.

“I hope to provide leadership to the PRAC and I look forward to working collaboratively with all the PRAC members, EMA's other Committees and its staff in the best interest of European Union citizens,” said Sabine Straus. “At the heart of all the activities of the PRAC are patient safety and the protection of public health. My aim is to maintain good, robust science as one of the most important drivers of the work of the Committee.”

The PRAC is the EMA committee responsible for assessing and monitoring the safety of human medicines. It was formally established by the pharmacovigilance legislation which came into effect in 2012 to help strengthen the safety monitoring of medicines across Europe.