After 5 months of work and 119 personalities interviewed, the Senate investigation commission released its report on the shortage of medicines this morning. With a dependent diagnosis: in the chain of production and distribution of the drug, the dysfunctions are at all levels.
Starting with the laboratories. 70% of medicines in shortage are old medicines whose profitability has diminished over the years. Laboratories are losing interest in these drugs in favor of more innovative ones whose prices are experiencing a meteoric rise, attacks the president of the investigative commission. Result, 3700 medicines are declared today in tension or shortage. There were 700 in 2018.
More shortages to come
And it’s not over. Despite all the rhetoric surrounding the relocation of this industry, more shortages are expected.
At the head of the commission of investigation, he warns: “That is, if before implementing all this, the consequences for health must be anticipated and evaluated, or in any case be able to find therapeutic substitutes that are up to the task. of the current quality of care”.
Because the manufacturers are not the only ones in question. He also highlighted: the social security financing system, which every year cuts health spending without taking into account the reality of the needs of an increasingly aging population. Health insurance is caught between the need to save money and the obligation to reimburse therapies that are certainly very innovative but are increasingly expensive.
Control and regulation
In fact, the entire organization of drug policy needs to be reviewed. We have a lot of organizations of all kinds, which are not coordinated, which lack transparency and which do not have the means of sanctioning that they should have. The senators were thus surprised to learn that no one really controls the level of compulsory stocks. As for the lists of so-called essential medicines, they are numerous, sometimes contradictory, sometimes established without the help of scientific societies.
Dysfunctions are at all levels, including ministries. The commission of inquiry says it fought to get the full amount of the CIR, the research tax credit: 710 million euros in total last year for the pharmaceutical sector. Public money that is not subject to any obligation on the part of the manufacturers, neither in terms of distribution nor in terms of place of production, regrets the rapporteur of the commission, the senator of Val-de-Marne Laurence Cohen.
The Senate report makes 36 proposals and recommends rethinking, reviewing the entire drug policy in France, from price fixing to redistribution of stocks. Give obligations to manufacturers. Anticipate as much as possible and do not control only when voltage is detected. The answer will be partly European.
Finally, the commission advocates the creation of a general secretariat for medicines in France so that there is finally a real pilot on the plane.
Source: BFM TV
