Shortage of drugs: you have to pay the price!

Paris, Tuesday, July 3, 2018 – The year 2017 had crossed
records: shortages of drugs of interest
Major Therapeutic Drug (MITM) increased by 30%,
according to the figures established by the National Security Agency of
drug (ANSM). The findings made in pharmacies
contribute to the fear that the situation is not better in
2018.

Drugs not cheap enough in France

Increasingly, pests are signaling the role played by the
low prices applied in France to partly explain the
situation. ' When marketing a product,
pharmaceutical companies have every interest in selling it in a
country where the drug is expensive, such as Germany, Denmark or
Sweden. In France or Portugal, the drug is not expensive,
so the pharmaceutical companies set quotas based
of last year's consumption ", explains for example
Pierre Kreit, president of the Syndicat des Pharmaciens de la Marne,
recently questioned by France 3. The achievement of the quotas
lead the laboratories to focus on the supply of
other countries rather than France and other states where prices
are judged too low.

Stop procrastinating

If public authorities prefer to focus on
production problems or difficulties related to
supply of raw material, this explanation is not
not a taboo for the Academy of Medicine. In recommendations
concerning the unavailability of medicines, recommendations
motivated by urgency, the Academy makes it clear that for
indispensable products whose price is " the condition
availability limit "this must be revised. he
It is even for wise men the first step to take without

Moreover, considering that the steering of these questions should
be entrusted to an "enlarged group" made up of " representatives
concerned administrations and agencies, industry,
hospital and pharmacy pharmacists and Academies ",
the Academy notes that the latter should be guided by an attitude
" pragmatic, that is to say not to wait to have identified
all the measures to be taken, including those for the long term, for
initiate the first steps "

Relocate in Europe

Beyond these injunctions and different recommendations
must prevail immediately (such as the revision of the conditions
calls for tenders, the creation of a price ceiling or
promotion of central purchasing bodies and groups), the Academy
of medicine lists various recommendations aimed along
term. She insists in this context again on
the importance of relocating the " synthesis of active substances
in Europe ", a measure which has already been mentioned by many
repeated by different bodies, but which could not be
implemented and was preferred to other provisions not totally
effective so far.

Aurélie Haroche