How can drug shortages be mitigated and ultimately avoided? This Tuesday, June 13, Emmanuel Macron will try to provide answers. Visiting the site of the Aguettant pharmaceutical laboratory in Champagne, Ardèche, the president must present a plan to relocate the production of drugs to France, in order to deal with structural shortages of imported products, including paracetamol as well as most antibiotics.
“As the Covid crisis had already taught us, delegating the production of our essential pharmaceutical products to others is a dead end for the country,” noted the Head of State on Tuesday, according to a text sent to the Agence France Presse by the Elysée Palace.
37% of French people recently faced with shortages
From antibiotics to paracetamol and antiepileptics to cancer drugs… More and more drugs are running out of pharmacies and hospitals in France, causing growing concern among various players. According to a BVA study carried out for France Assos Santé in March 2023, 37% of French people have been faced with shortages in pharmacies, underlines the Elysée. Or one in four French people.
Last May, France Inter journalist Giulia Foïs seized on the subject, raising a cry of alarm on Twitter in the face of the impossibility of obtaining medicine for her son.
But Sabril is far from the only essential pharmaceutical in short supply. According to’National Medicines Safety Agency, 3,747 reports of supply tensions and stock shortages were recorded last year. “For 52% of them, there is no return to normal date announced by the manufacturer”, explains William Feys, of the Observatory of Transparency in Medicine Policies (OTMeds), in the columns of our colleagues from The Obs. Supplies for screening reagents for sexually transmitted diseases are also scarce. “In emergencies, Actilyse, the only thinner to treat stroke, is missing. Just like belatacept, a drug that prevents transplant rejection”, indignant Catherine Simonin, representative of health users at France Assos Santé and administrator of the League against Cancer, still in The Obs.
Drug shortages are nothing new, but they have worsened significantly over the past two years. Today, there are more than double the declarations of shortages counted three years earlier. At the end of December, a shortage of amoxicillin had affected France, forcing authorized pharmacies to manufacture this antibiotic for children themselves.
Lists of “critical drugs” to get by
A problem partly linked to an excessive dependence on foreign countries. France depends 60 to 80% on imports, particularly from China, for the production of so-called mature drugs (antibiotics, anesthesia products, etc.), a threshold that rises to 95% for biomedicines. To respond to these shortages, a list of 281 “critical” drugs, the production of which is likely to be relocated, was given to François Braun in mid-May. But it is still not published, raising many expectations in the sector. The president should provide details on its content on Tuesday.
In this process of reindustrialization in the pharmaceutical sector, around a hundred projects labeled France Relance, including around forty for relocations, are underway. Among the most emblematic, that of the Seqens company in Isère. An investment of 100 million euros invested to relaunch the production of paracetamol.
On May 25, Roland Lescure, Minister Delegate for Industry, was interviewed by the commission of inquiry into drug shortages, in the Senate. “We have to force manufacturers to produce in France,” he said. “My strategic objective is to ensure that we have a positive balance, that we open more factories in France than we close,” explained the minister, who will be alongside Emmanuel Macron. in Champagne.