Paediatric Committee elects new Chair and Vice-Chair

The European Medicines Agency's Paediatric Committee (PDCO) elected Dirk Mentzer as its new Chair at its September 2013 meeting. Henk van den Berg has been elected as the Committee's new Vice-chair. Both have been elected for a three-year term.

A pediatrician by training, Dr Mentzer is currently Head of the Pharmacovigilance Unit at the Paul-Ehrlich Institut in Frankfurt, Germany. Dr van den Berg is a consultant in paediatric haematology / oncology at the Medicines Evaluation Board in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Both have been members of the PDCO since it was established in 2007.

At the meeting, Drs Mentzer and van den Berg and the Committee thanked Daniel Brasseur, outgoing chair of the PDCO, for his exceptional leadership of the PDCO over the past six years, and said that they looked forward to working with him in his new capacity as a member of the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP).

The main role of the PDCO is to assess the content of paediatric investigation plans (PIPs) and adopt opinions on them. This includes the assessment of applications for a full or partial waiver and assessment of applications for deferrals.