2023-10-03 11:00:06
After a winter marked by supply tensions for amoxicillin and paracetamol, which caused a lot of noise, recent months have brought little respite to French pharmacies. Certainly, the antibiotic and the painkiller are both back behind the counter, but many medications continue to be missing from pharmacy shelves. To try to remedy this scourge, the State stepped up to the plate during the presentation of the 2024 Social Security budget on Wednesday September 27.
Of the fifty articles contained in the Social Security financing bill, three are devoted to the implementation of measures aimed at eradicating shortages. The government notably outlines the broad outlines of a white drug plan, intended to be activated by the Minister of Health during an emergency situation. The latter was among the main projects identified by the steering committee on medicines, launched at the beginning of February to lay the foundations for a “new strategy for preventing and managing shortages”.
In the event of an observed insufficiency of certain antibiotics, this white plan thus plans a whole series of exceptional measures to ration products in tension and avoid waste, while the situation resolves.
Hunting for waste on antibiotics
The government plans in particular to make it compulsory the delivery to the unit of medications affected by tensions. According to the executive’s calculations, this measure, which would present no additional cost and would even save several million euros for Health Insurance, would have saved nearly 12 million amoxicillin tablets and capsules during of the last winter season.
However, it arouses the anger of pharmacists, who consider its implementation particularly restrictive for pharmacies. “By distributing in bulk, we will not be able to manage batch traceability. In addition, for amoxicillin, the majority of shortages observed concern pediatric versions in syrup form, for which it is not possible to dispense individually. It’s a populist measure that won’t solve anything.”, annoys Pierre-Olivier Variot, president of the Union of Community Pharmacists’ Unions.
To avoid unnecessary prescriptions, the delivery of antibiotics in situations of shortage will also be conditional on the completion of a rapid diagnostic test, covered by Health Insurance. Subject to a result confirming the bacterial origin of the pathology, the patient can then collect their treatment from the pharmacist. Otherwise, the order will be void. With more than 9 million tonsillitis diagnosed each year, of which only a third requires antibiotic treatment, the generalization of these screening tests would provide a welcome relief in the event of a shortage. However, it has its cost, despite the savings made by avoiding the delivery of antibiotics: around 3.3 million euros.
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