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in collaboration with
Dr. Yves Dour (Doctor in Pharmacy)
Medical validation:
December 16, 2022
While many drugs are becoming scarce in France, the health authorities have been recommending since Monday the delivery of certain antibiotics to the unit. Update on the question with Dr. Yves Dour, doctor of pharmacy.
Supply tensions affecting some of the most prescribed antibiotics – notably amoxicillin, an antibiotic prescribed for children which could be difficult to find until next March – have led health authorities to advocate their dispensing in units and not more per box.
Antibiotics given “single”
“Supply difficulties with amoxicillin, alone or in combination with clavulanic acid, persist“, underlined in this respect the General Directorate of Health. “In this context, it is recalled that the prescription, like the wise use of antibiotics, is essential“, she reiterated.
Doctors and pharmacists are called upon to change their habits.
The “unit dispensing” of amoxicillin is particularly encouraged.
For the patient – who will receive the exact number of units prescribed by the doctor – this means that the remaining units must remain in the box, which is itself kept at the pharmacy for later use.
A problem with “product traceability”
A “rescue” solution, which is not ideal according to Dr. Yves Dour, doctor of pharmacy.
“If the laboratories had done their job and had produced the right quantities of base, we wouldn’t be here. Ditto on the side of doctors who prescribe amoxicillin for 7, 8, 9 or 10 days when the patient does not need it. In my opinion, unit delivery is and will remain a bad measure in terms of product traceability. Unpacking the medicine in a box and preparing quantities adapted to the patients makes the work of the pharmacist more complex, and this forces us to carry out a certain number of additional acts, for which we are not remunerated..”
The pharmacist also believes that the “staircase orders“, track supported by the union of pharmacists, could be an interesting alternative, just like the fact of “deliver antibiotics in 2023 based on stocks remaining at the end of winter“.
Until new measures are taken, we will have to be patient with amoxicillin. Asked about the date of a return to normal, the Minister of Health had declared on November 20: “hard to say“…