2023-07-07 05:59:58
“Lack of an overall vision”, “random steering”, “poor controls”, “lack of anticipation”… The report drawn up by Senator Sonia de La Provôté (Calvados, Union centriste group), who came to present, on Thursday, July 6, the conclusions of the senatorial commission of inquiry into the shortage of medicines of which she is president, is to say the least critical . “There is a bankruptcy of the drug policy”summarizes, at his side, Laurence Cohen (Val-de-Marne, Communist Republican citizen and environmentalist group), rapporteur for the commission.
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If the 400-page report, the fruit of five months of work, during which more than fifty hearings were held with health professionals, patient associations, drug manufacturers, representatives of government agencies and ministers, delivers a rather gloomy diagnosis of the management of shortages in France, it also formulates a series of prescriptions intended to remedy them.
Among the 36 recommendations made by the senators is notably a strengthening of controls concerning the obligations to which manufacturers are subject. Manufacturers who market medicinal products of major therapeutic interest are required to establish plans for managing shortages and to keep two-month security stocks to compensate for supply disruptions.
Powers of sanctions “too little used”
“However, these obligations are unevenly applied and insufficiently monitored”notes the report, which pleads to this effect for a reinforcement of the means of the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM), whose powers of sanction are “too little used”.
Recalling the shortages of amoxicillin and paracetamol that affected the country in the winter of 2022-2023, the senators also recommend “control more” industry forecasts ahead of seasonal epidemic peaks.
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This increased surveillance must also be exercised at the level of public aid distributed to industrialists, warns the report. In the crosshairs of senators, the research tax credit. If the attractiveness of this device is not called into question, the senators believe that it must however be subject to clear guarantees of“supply of the French market” and of “sustainability of industrial presence”.
Create a General Secretariat for Medicines
Stressing the lack of coordination between the various government agencies, the senators advise, moreover, to create a general secretariat for medicines, placed under the authority of Matignon, in order to improve the management of political action.
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