This is called being a victim of your success. Available since mid-September, the Beyfortus already seems to be the object of all desire. Faced with this very high demand, the Ministry of Health fears that a shortage will affect this treatment which makes it possible to immunize babies against “RSV”, the respiratory virus which causes bronchiolitis. To the point of reviewing the strategy of its immunization campaign.
From now on, the Beyfortus will only be available in maternity wards. This, “in the interest of good management of available stocks […] in order to protect as a priority those children most at risk of being hospitalized”, specifies the minister’s office in a press release. However, these precautionary measures only concern the 50 mg version of the treatment, intended for infants weighing less than five kilograms. Parents whose baby exceeds this weight thus retain the possibility of obtaining the 100 mg treatment directly from a pharmacy. “Infants under one month old are most at risk of developing a serious form of bronchiolitis,” explains the ministry. while avoiding specifying the case of children leaving the maternity ward before their one month mark.
Avoiding congestion
Although it is still much too early to assess the impact of Beyfortus on the hospitalization rate, there is currently nothing to guarantee a winter season without an epidemic. Fearing the perverse effects of the arrival of preventive treatment, the Directorate General of Health (DGS) insists on the fact that “we must not forget barrier gestures”. Especially since bronchiolitis affects nearly 480,000 children each winter, or nearly 30% of babies under two years old.
Last November, 10,000 caregivers took up their pens to denounce the deterioration of the hospital, and more specifically of pediatric emergencies. “Throughout this month, we have been confronted with what we did not dare to imagine: daily, children hospitalized on stretchers or on their parents’ knees in the emergency room, in an office refurbished for the occasion, children intubated and hospitalized without a room in the intensive care unit corridor, […] catastrophic returns of children sent home for lack of space.
And to breathe: “The annual bronchiolitis epidemic has transformed into a bad remake of the Covid-19 pandemic”. It must be said that with more than 35,000 infants hospitalized, including 2,500 in critical care, the seasonal epidemic reached an unprecedented level last year. With Beyfortus, the government is hopeful of being able to contain the flow, and of avoiding a new overcrowding of pediatric emergency services this year.