Fight shortages. This is the objective of the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) which has just presented this Tuesday, October 3, a “winter plan” aimed at anticipating tensions on certain “major drugs”. Despite a last season marked by stock shortages of amoxicillin and Doliprane in particular, the Minister of Health Aurélien Rousseau wants to be reassuring about amoxicillin stocks for the winter. Speaking to France Inter, however, he warned that reserves will vary depending on the intensity of epidemics such as influenza or bronchiolitis.
During the winter of 2022-2023, several drugs such as certain antibiotics – notably amoxicillin, commonly used in certain bacterial infections – corticosteroids and paracetamol, have in fact suffered periods of more or less long supply tensions, in a context of triple Covid-flu-bronchiolitis epidemic. To avoid a repeat of these difficulties, the former Minister of Health, François Braun, instructed the medicines agency in February to establish a preparation plan for winter epidemics.
Three indicators studied
With winter pathologies, there will be an “increased consumption of medicines against fever or antibiotics, it is necessary to anticipate the needs of patients”, underlined to AFP Christelle Ratignier-Carbonneil, general director of the ANSM. All stakeholders, “health professionals, patients, supply chain actors”, met on Tuesday to launch this plan, she said.
The plan will be based on three types of indicators making it possible to assess “all dimensions of the situation”. Epidemiological data from Public Health France will thus be scrutinized (medical consultations, visits to emergency rooms, etc.), data from the ANSM on supplies (stocks from laboratories, wholesale distributors and pharmacies, sales in pharmacies, etc.) and data in the field (reporting of difficulties from health professionals and patients).
Stock distribution
Depending on the evolution of these indicators, the agency may be required to take measures to prevent stock shortages such as imports of medicines, quotas or the mobilization of compounded preparations – medicines prepared to measure for the specific needs of one or more patients.
The ANSM “monitors stocks” of pharmacies on a day-to-day basis, Minister of Health Aurélien Rousseau added on Tuesday morning. On the front line, pharmacists complain in particular about the working time lost in accounting for their stocks. “I spend twelve hours a week looking for medicines,” Pierre-Olivier Variot, president of the Union of Community Pharmacists’ Unions (USPO), confided last Saturday to L’Express, tired. don’t, it’s very time-consuming.”
The minister, on the other hand, recognized distribution problems, pointing out “over-stocks” in the largest pharmacies and announcing “the decision to give back to those who distribute the responsibility that all pharmacies, including the smallest, have access to these stocks”.