Official launch of European Reference Networks (ERN)

An important milestone in the history of EU healthcare has been marked in Vilnius, Lithuania, 9-10 March 2017.
The European Reference Networks Conference & ERN Kick-off meeting was held in the home country of Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, and opened by the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker.

24 European Reference Networks (ERNs) dealing with rare and low prevalence complex medical conditions were officially launched during this conference. 

One of the 24 networks is called RITA and deals with there main areas:

• Primary Immune Deficiencies,
• Auto Inflammatory Diseases and
• Auto-immune Diseases. 

Vasculitis is an auto-immune disease and therefore both John Mills and Peter Verhoeven are heavily involved in this ERN. They are both so called 'elected ePAG representatives' where ePAG stands for European Patient Advocacy Groups.
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​John and Peter encourage all European (and British) Vasculitis Patient Groups to get in touch with them and to become part of this extremely important European network. Simply send them a brief e-mail :
Peter@vasculitis.eu 
John@vasculitis.eu