The shortage continues. As the period of respiratory infections and other epidemic episodes progresses, patients find it increasingly difficult to obtain certain antibiotics, which are out of stock in several pharmacies. Among them, amoxicillin, whose oral solution is used more to treat young children, for example affected by bacterial tonsillitis.
As remembered The ParisianOn the sidelines of a meeting with the Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, Philippe Besset, president of the federation of pharmaceutical unions of France, indicated that 60% of pharmacies do not have or almost do not have amoxicillin.
Pharmacists are alarming
Anger is brewing in many French pharmacies. Speaking to BFMTV, Éric Myon, a pharmacist, spoke of a situation “worse than last winter.”
“Last winter we faced a shortage of antibiotics, mainly amoxicillin in its pediatric version and then in its adult version. Now, although it is not even mid-December, the need for antibiotics is still greater than last year and the stocks are rising even lower,” he says.
According to him, this situation is also responsible for an overload of work for pharmacists affected by this shortage.
“That represents almost one or two hours of time wasted by pharmacists searching among our four wholesale distributors for the so-called products that our health authorities and industrial laboratories say are available, and that are not at all,” he explains.
A retention of industrialists?
What is the origin of this lack? Guest on BFMTV, Béatrice Clairaz-Mahiou, president of the Hauts-de-Seine pharmacists’ union, assures: “there is no single explanation.”
“80% of the active ingredients are manufactured in India and China and global demand has skyrocketed, they have conserved their raw materials. There is also a problem with packaging, there is bottling, packaging and problems in these production lines. There is also stocks that do not arrive,” he points out.
However, and this is where the problem lies, these antibiotics, including amoxicillin, are available in large quantities from manufacturers, reports the ANSM. Why then, at the end of the chain, do pharmacists sometimes take up to a week to obtain supplies from their wholesalers, who also have little stock?
A grotesque situation that Pierre-Olivier Variot, president of the Union of Community Pharmacists’ Unions, confirms the figures. “We are considering drug release volumes in 2023 that are approximately identical to those in 2019, but in 2019 there were no shortages. We have the impression that there is a stock block among industrialists,” he notes.
According to him, some laboratories do not hesitate to try to take advantage of the situation and sell medicines directly to pharmacists, indirectly.
“Sometimes there is even blackmail with medicines. There is a laboratory that came to tell me ‘I have stocks of amoxicillin, if you ask me for medicines worth 10,000 euros I will give them to you’,” he reveals.
Self-management and “New Deal”
Faced with these disruptions, pharmacists are forced to adapt and manufacture their own antibiotics. Éric Myon emphasizes that his pharmacy is one of the 41 that “subcontract these preparations to all pharmacies in France.”
“Today we produce 6,000 capsules of amoxicillin, which will allow us to manufacture 400 small boxes of 15 capsules,” he lists.
Launched last January, an inter-ministerial mission, commissioned by Matignon, called last August for a “New Deal” for the entire pharmaceutical chain, which would go from manufacturers to patients, to protect against this type of situation.
Source: BFM TV
