It is the role of AESGP to further the use of non-prescription medicines and self-care products.  In future, self-care and self-medication will play an even more important part within the framework of public health policy.  The main reasons are:

1. Individuals are becoming increasingly interested in playing a more active role in managing their own health.  Indeed, consumer research has demonstrated that people consider health as their most precious possession requiring constant effort and attention.
   
   Information about the wide variety of health problems that can be treated without the intervention of a medical doctor is forever more widely available.  At the same time, people are – thanks to the Internet and other media – better informed about the increasing range of treatments which their national health authorities are making available for these problems.
   
   All European countries are facing an exponential increase in healthcare expenditure and demand, mainly because of:
   
   • an ageing population new diseases requiring expensive care increased demand for access to medical progress
   • rising health expectations.
   
   At the same time, there is general consensus in Europe that health expenditure covered directly by the State or by public social security systems should not continue to escalate at a considerably higher rate than the Gross National Product.
   
   Given that people are more knowledgeable than before on health matters and want to take more responsibility for their own health, the logical course of action is to shift the responsibility for a person’s health from the health-care system to the patient/consumer.
   
   Self-care and self-medication will continue to play a key role in this process as statistics show that people are indeed capable and willing to treat certain health problems themselves.
   
   
2. Governments, industry and health professionals such as doctors and pharmacists have to ensure that they move in line with consumer expectations.  This requires a high degree of cooperation between them.  Important milestones in the facilitation of this process were:
   
   
   
   • a "Charter of Collaboration" between the Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union (PGEU) and AESGP signed in November 2004. This builds on the first Charter of Collaboration between the two organisations signed in 1993.
     
     
   • a "Common position on self-medication" adopted by the Standing Committee of Medical Doctors (CPME) – in collaboration with the European Union of General Practitioners (UEMO) and the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS) and AESGP in 1997.
     
     
   • a consumer brochure on "What is self-medication?" published in all 11 Community languages with the support of the European Commission in 1998.