2023-09-11 14:17:35
“Supply tension”, « rupture de stock »… Almost every day, a new drug appears in the list updated by the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) on the availability of health products. After a winter marked by shortages of amoxicillin and paracetamol which caused a lot of noise, tensions are far from having subsided. In recent weeks in pharmacies, difficulties have never been greater in obtaining Flecaine, an antiarrhythmic drug which concerns some 380,000 people suffering from heart rhythm disorders. Return to a crisis now established.
“Ten years” of tensions
“We go from drug to drug, every week there is a new one”, describes Philippe Besset, president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France. Anti-infectives, anti-epileptics, antibiotics, anti-diabetics… Supply disruptions have become a scourge that affects all ranges of medications. “The shortages are permanent, it’s a worrying subject”relates Agnès Giannotti, president of MG France, the main union of general practitioners.
“This summer, tensions continued to increase, particularly over cardiology medications”, confirms Doctor Isabelle Yoldjian, medical director at the National Medicines Safety Agency. The alert on Flécaine, a drug called “of major therapeutic interest” – either for which an interruption of treatment is likely to endanger life in the short or medium term or represents a significant loss of opportunity for the patient – is only the latest. “When it comes to cardiovascular disease, it is never comfortable, but we cannot contrast the pathologies or make a scale of severity in the drugs of major therapeutic interest which are missing, any rupture is problematic”, takes over the responsibility.
Since the release of Covid-19, the list has continued to grow: the figures for 2023 have not yet been communicated by the ANSM, but in 2022, more than 3,000 drugs of major therapeutic interest were reported as out of stock or at risk of stock out by pharmaceutical manufacturers, compared to 1,504 in 2019.
According to the France Assos Santé barometer, which represents patients and users, dating from March, the number of patients saying they are facing a shortage of a medication jumped from 29% to 37% in one year. “Shortages have been felt for ten years, but the phenomenon is increasing and above all we see no end”worries Catherine Simonin, member of France Assos Santé, who also cites tensions over neurology drugs or certain chemotherapies.
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