A time saver for everyone? Traveling to Rouen on Thursday, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced a series of measures targeting the French healthcare system. One of them: the possibility that pharmacists prescribe certain antibiotics to treat common pathologies.
Thus, a patient suffering from cystitis or angina, common infections, but which can be very painful, will soon be able to contact their pharmacist directly.
At the moment, antibiotics can only be prescribed by doctors, which means making an appointment with a GP, who is often overburdened. A change that, therefore, will also relieve professionals. Two birds with one stone?
How does it work?
The precise contours of this new system will have to be specified in the next social security financing bill presented in September. The first elements suggest that the procedure will be as follows.
A patient suspected of having an infection will go to their pharmacist. To do this, a rapid diagnostic orientation test will be carried out. Depending on the disease and its severity, the prescribed molecule will be adapted. In the case of cystitis, fosfomycin will be prescribed. In the case of bacterial angina, amoxicillin will be prescribed.
moderate use
with increasing The world, this measure could also make it possible to combat resistance to antibiotics. That is, resistance to antibiotics driven in particular by the misuse of these products.
Diagnosis and better treatment guaranteed by tests. Of the “6 million antibiotic prescriptions for angina, only 2 million would be justified,” laments the report on the regulation of medical devices published on August 29.
Even so, doctors do not always appreciate that part of their prerogatives are delegated to pharmacists or other health professionals. In order to horizontalize part of the workload, the government, for example, opened vaccination to pharmacies; The “angry doctors” collective strongly criticized this change.
Source: BFM TV
