Announced since December, the shortage of antibiotics could last a few more weeks. Pharmacies and the government are working to find solutions and the executive hopes for an improvement during the month of January 2023.
Doctors’ fears were well founded. Amoxicillin, the most used and best-selling antibiotic in France, is missing in 70% of pharmacies in France in these first days of 2023. A beginning of shortage which was however announced by health professionals since more than a month. At the end of November, several organizations including the French Society of Pediatrics and the Society of Infectious Pathology in the French language warned in a press release that “all the conditions are met for a major public health crisis in pediatrics. [d’ici à] a few days.” In question? The epidemic of bronchiolitis of an unprecedented force which declared itself very early and lasted several weeks pushing to an overconsumption of antibiotics – in particular of amoxicillin used against bacterial infections – compared to to forecasts.
But once the report has been established, it is impossible to reverse the trend or to remedy the shortage of antibiotics, at least in the immediate future. The government, after a month of alerts, hoped on December 29 to see the shortage disappear during January 2023 thanks to deliveries of cerfpodoxime, an alternative drug to amoxicillin, but pharmacies remain on their guard. For their part, patients still have restricted access to the antibiotic product, when the latter is still available in pharmacies, sometimes complicating the care and recovery of patients.
Does the shortage of antibiotics put patients at risk?
In winter, amoxicillin is one of the best-selling drugs in pharmacies to deal with various infections such as influenza, bronchiolitis or even pneumonia. And their absence at a time when the country is in the grip of a triple epidemic is not without risk. While for the time being it is mainly amoxicillin-based drugs intended for children that are lacking, health professionals fear that the shortage will extend to “adult” forms of the product and then to substitute antibiotics. But whatever its extent, the shortage can have fatal consequences for some seriously ill or more vulnerable patients, children and adults alike.
What are the solutions to the shortage of antibiotics?
On the front line in the face of the shortage of antibiotics, pharmacies have been mobilized. 40 pharmacy preparation workers and 7 hospital preparation workers started producing antibiotic capsules to make up for the shortage of amoxicillin syrup. An action coordinated by a protocol involving the Ministry of Health and the National Medicines Safety Agency. This initiative makes it possible to cover “30% of the 400,000 amoxicillin treatments sold per month in France”, writes France 3 Pays de la Loire.
The government has also bet on another remedy by ordering cerfpodoxime as it indicated on December 29 during a meeting with the unions of pharmacists, the general directorate of health and the drug agency ANSM. But on the professional side, the strategy is not yet completely convincing and the president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France (FSPF), Philippe Besset, launched on December 30 on West France “The ministry assured us that the labs had delivered cerfpodoxime but we cannot yet order it in our pharmacies. There is a distortion between the labs’ discourse and the actual availability for the patient.” Another lever of action to limit the shortage from growing is to “raise the selling price of mature drugs to give a positive price signal again”, explained on RTL end of December Frédéric Bizard, economist specializing in social protection and health issues. According to him, because of the low prices at which drugs are sold, it is “less and less attractive for laboratories to produce in France and distribute in France”. Thus the country is supplied after its neighbors and is deprived of stocks.
Can we anticipate drug and antibiotic shortages?
In addition to these solutions which seek to prevent the shortage of antibiotics from getting worse, Frédéric Bizard also puts forward ideas, one in particular, so that the risk of a shortage of amoxicillin or other drugs no longer arises in the future. : better anticipate and have better visibility on health needs. He calls in particular for the creation of an “observatory of health product needs” because for the time being “we have little visibility of the needs and the existing offer. We have to bring this up to standard and that there is cooperation, greater fluidity between stakeholders”, he said at the microphone of RTL. The problem comes partly from the fact that “producers make their own forecasts according to their own market based on the two previous years” according to the economist, but with the health crisis the needs have changed considerably in the last two years. and the forecasts were not enough to survive the winter with enough antibiotics.