2023-12-14 11:47:51
“We have medications that have entered our daily lives and that the French take without having seen a doctor. We need to be better at being transparent regarding side effects“, declared the minister on BFMTV.
Like every year, the independent journal Prescrire published this week a list of 105 drugs (including 88 marketed in France) having “an unfavorable benefit-risk balance“.
Among them, drugs well known to the French such as Smecta, Voltarène, Maxilase, Vogalène and Toplexil.
Some of them, such as Smecta, Voltarene or Vogalene, were already present on the list published in 2022. Smecta was also present in 2019, like Toplexil.
“No medicine is a piece of sugar”
Should we therefore ban them? “The first element is the analysis of medical effectiveness, then we balance the benefits and risks.“, replied Aurélien Rousseau. “I comply with all instructions given by the Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM), my only line is science“, he added.
He cited the example of drugs that decongest the nose, such as Humex or Actifed, which the drug agency recently recommended not to use due to the persistence of rare but extremely serious side effects.
If the Minister of Health judges that from now on “our fellow citizens know and understand that anti-cold products supposed to block everything, it is not that obvious“, he also insisted on the necessary caution because “no medicine is a piece of sugar“.
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