2023-05-11 10:00:05
How to stop the scourge of drug shortages? After a winter of 2022 marked by strong supply tensions for paracetamol and amoxicillin in pediatric form, two basics in medicine cabinets, the arrival of spring was an opportunity for pharmaceutical manufacturers to sow the seeds a reflection on the remedies to be applied.
Or rather to transplant the seedlings already planted in recent years… The battery of proposals presented Thursday, May 11 by the LEEM, the professional organization of pharmaceutical manufacturers, in order to prevent drug shortages, indeed largely echoes the recommendations carried by these same actors in 2019 for the government. Among the main measures prescribed by pharmaceutical companies are two suggestions already made four years ago.
The first highlights the need for better coordination of information systems on supply tensions and disruptions existing at each level of the drug chain (industrialists, pharmacists, wholesaler-distributors), which are currently struggling to effectively share their data with each other.
The second advocates the establishment of a list of ” medicines of health and strategic interest to be secured as a priority. A so-called list of major therapeutic interest – with which certain specific obligations are associated, including that of security stocks – currently exists, but its « very broad definition has the effect of encompassing up to half of the drugs on the market, which remains too high a number to act effectively on their possible shortages »observes the LEEM.
“Blackmail over price increases”
Above all, the professional organization reiterates its plea for a price increase on medicines « in a situation of economic vulnerability”, considering that the low profitability of certain products does not encourage the maintenance of their production and ultimately contributes to aggravating shortages. This measure remains unquestionably the most controversial. In particular, it provokes the anger of the patient association France Assos Santé, which sees in it a « price increase blackmail » unjustified.
Will these proposals find a favorable response from the government? The pharmaceutical groups are not the only ones to have tackled the search for solutions. In 2018, the Academy of Pharmacy and the Senate sounded the alarm and put forward avenues to stem the problem. They were followed, in 2020, by the Biot report, commissioned by the government, then, in 2021, by the Giorgi report of the general inspection of social affairs. All of them drew up the same worrying observation on patient access to drugs, together with recommendations. Without success.
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