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 recalled on 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 [to medicines] at every point in the territory ” and in sufficient quantity, especially the most consumed products. Four types of drugs are subject to special monitoring:
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.
At the slightest warning sign of a shortage or when she receives a “declaration of risk of tensions or ruptures”, the general director of 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 asked to “limit the volumes and [to make] good use of the medicine”. For the moment, “we have stocks for the winter, particularly in terms of amoxicillin, the most common antibiotic” the Minister of Health wanted to reassure, but even he fears supply difficulties and especially of distribution of medications this winter.
But before this measure of last resort, the Ministry of Health plans to give a 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.
