2023-10-28 05:01:00
the essentials The French group Sanofi announced that it would separate from its Consumer Health activity in 2024, in favor of innovative medicines.
Sector professionals and other drug experts are talking about a decision that was at least “expected”: the French laboratory Sanofi announced this Friday, October 27 that it would indeed separate from its Consumer Health activity by the end of the year. fourth quarter of 2024. The French pharmaceutical group wishes to abandon its production of products sold without a prescription and concentrate its activity around innovative medicines and vaccines.
Sanofi will therefore turn the page on Mucosolvana medicine used for coughs,Allegraa product that helps fight against rhinitis, and especially Doliprane, the most prescribed drug in the world. This sector of activity had enabled Sanofi to achieve a turnover of 5.1 billion euros, an increase of 8.6% over one year, in 2022: “We have a figure here which is not in not very high among pharmaceutical manufacturers, while investors demand very high levels of profitability, analyzes Nathalie Coutinet, health economist and author of The economics of medicine (Discovery, 2018), for La Dépêche du Midi. Non-prescription medicine is a seasonal market. So this is probably not where the expectations of profitability are the highest.”
“A little funny”
Unprofitable, but also criticized… Several consumer products no longer have the confidence of health authorities: the National Medicines Safety Agency recently criticized a certain number of molecules. Vasoconstrictors may cause rare and sometimes devastating adverse effects.
Despite these obstacles, last January, Sanofi announced its intention to relocate the production of active ingredients – used in the production of Doliprane – to France by 2025. “It is on this point that the decision of the French laboratory is paradoxical, evokes Nathalie Coutinet. It’s a bit funny in a way: President Emmanuel Macron himself applauded this announcement.”
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Sanofi will separate from Doliprane and non-prescription drugs
It remains to be seen what the stock market placement of these non-prescription drugs has in store for consumers. “With Doliprane, Sanofi had developed what we call an “umbrella brand”, that is to say a generic name which allowed the group to offer a whole range of products such as Dolirhume, Doliprane… continues Nathalie Coutinet. He “It’s not impossible that some of these drugs will disappear.”
More than 4,000 drugs out of stock or at risk of outage
Sanofi’s announcement comes amid increased drug shortages. According to Pierre-Olivier Variot, president of the Union of Community Pharmacists’ Unions (USPO), nearly 4,000 products are currently out of stock or at risk of shortage. “It’s getting dramatic,” the person commented this Friday. Several molecules would be affected, such as amoxicillin and cortisone, but also anti-cancer drugs, analgesics and anti-diabetics. “There is a mismatch between production and needs,” continues Pierre-Olivier Variot. “Typically, this is what we experienced last year with paracetamol.”
This context may well have partly pushed Sanofi to separate from its Consumer Health branch. “We have drugs here that are likely to pose a problem, particularly in terms of supply,” notes Nathalie Coutinet.
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