As winter approaches, health professionals are experiencing difficulties in supplying certain medications and fear shortages.
Will France have enough medicines to get through the winter and seasonal disease epidemics? The last winter left a bitter memory with shortages and tensions over the availability of certain therapeutic products. Resupply problems which continue to threaten pharmacies and healthcare professionals at the start of autumn.
The Ministry of Health took the lead before the start of winter to limit the risks of drug shortages. Minister Aurélien Rousseau thus recalled Franceinfo on October 3 that France had relocated the production of “25 strategic drugs” to its territory. For its part, the National Medicines Safety Agency (Ansm) has prepared what it calls its “winter plan” with one objective: “to be able to guarantee that there is access [aux médicaments] anywhere in the territory” and in sufficient quantity, particularly the most consumed products. Four types of medicines are subject to particular monitoring:
- Antibiotics like amoxicillin
- Paracetamol
- Anti-asthmatics
- Corticosteroids
The first step of this plan to avoid drug shortages is to monitor the health situation and needs using epidemiological data from Public Health France, pill supply data from Ansm and field data collected by professionals. health.
Limited use of medications?
At the slightest warning sign of a shortage or when it receives a “declaration of risk of tensions or ruptures”, the general director of the Ansm, Christelle Ratignier-Carbonneil, plans to “automatically, systematically block all exports” of medicines to cover national needs as a priority, as indicated on Franceinfo. It may also force the laboratories which produce medicines to go through wholesalers and no longer through direct sales to pharmacies.
In cases where these precautions were not enough, the French themselves would be called upon to participate in the efforts. They will be invited to “limit the volumes and [à faire] proper use of the medicine”. For the moment, “we have stocks for the winter in particular of amoxicillin, the most common antibiotic” wanted to reassure the Minister of Health, but even he fears difficulties supply and especially distribution of medicines this winter.
But before this measure of last resort, the Ministry of Health plans to give new responsibility to wholesalers, who would be the only ones in charge of the distribution of therapeutic products in all pharmacies, small or large, in the territory. In addition to this “very strong” measure, the Ansm plans to resort to importing medicines if some are available in other territories thanks to European or even international solidarity.