France’s pharmacies are running out of some medicines, a phenomenon that is worsening, affecting certain antibiotics and forcing health authorities to take emergency measures, but some observers say it is too late and not enough, France-Presse writes. an agency taken over by Agerpres.

“Today, our country is experiencing a shortage of essential antibiotics,” pediatrician Remi Salomon, president of the Paris Hospitals Medical Commission (AP-HP), wrote on Twitter Thursday night.

The first is amoxicillin, by far the main antibiotic prescribed to children in France to fight a range of bacterial infections, such as some ear infections and pneumonia.

However, there is currently “severe supply tension” of the form most often used in children, France’s state medicines agency ANSM said on Friday, citing a situation that could last until March.

Therefore, this treatment can be difficult to find in pharmacies – a phenomenon that is far from limited to France, as it affects most European countries, as well as the United States and Canada.

According to health authorities, this is due to increased demand after several years marked by the Covid crisis and numerous medical restrictions that have reduced the spread of several diseases.

“Inventories were not at normal levels and production lines need to be restarted,” ANSM said at a news conference.

“Maximum two boxes”

The authorities have therefore taken a number of emergency measures, including rationalisation, which limits the amount each pharmacy can order.

They also asked doctors and patients to use these antibiotics only if necessary: ​​for example, they are not prescribed against bronchiolitis, in conditions of a full epidemic of this disease.

The risk of shortages is part of a wider context in which authorities have already been forced to restrict the use of certain drugs in recent months.

The most telling case is paracetamol, a ubiquitous pain reliever: the authorities recommended that pharmacists not sell more than two boxes per patient, despite assurances from manufacturers that there would be no shortage.

But concerns about the deficit emerged much earlier than in the past few months, even as the situation worsened in the context of inflation and heightened geopolitical tensions over the war in Ukraine.

“Since 2008, the situation of inventory shortages and supply tensions has progressed alarmingly in France, as well as in the United States and other countries around the world,” Lim, the French lobby of the sector, already noted in 2019.

“anticipated” situation

In this context, the measures announced on Friday do not convince all observers, some believe that it is inappropriate to insist on the responsibility of patients and doctors.

Such speeches “do not attack the structural causes”, as assessed in the press release of the Observatory of Transparency in Medicines Policy, which regrets the “late” measures and the lack of reaction of the authorities in the face of the “foreseeable” situation.

This left-leaning organization is calling for a massive transfer of drug production to France, arguing that its development in several countries is contributing to supply problems.

The government, for its part, emphasizes that there are already numerous financial incentives to encourage drug manufacturers to repatriate their production to France.

He also insists that the law has recently strengthened the obligations of manufacturers in the event of shortages, requiring them to establish minimum stocks for certain types of processing.

However, in the case of amoxicillin, some of the raw materials of which are produced outside Europe, these obligations can only “soften the shock”, according to ANSM. On Friday, the agency acknowledged that this was “not enough to avoid deficit risks.”