“We are going to have shortages again. We must be very clear: there is going to be a risk of stock shortages (of medicines)”, warns this Wednesday morning on RTL the Minister of Health, François Braun, the day after Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that a fifty drugs deemed “critical” would see their production lines repatriated to France. “It will still be complicated next winter but believe me that I am fully mobilized on it”, he continues, ensuring that when the situation is “a little tense”, he wants to have “less stocks” available, at the provided that “the French can always find the drugs they need”.
For the Minister, it is above all a question of “identifying a list of essential medicines”, those “with which we can have a health system which functions normally”. Among them, there are “of course which are essential and quite rare to use, others very common such as paracetamol for example”, he explains, wishing “to follow the production lines very closely from the start. factory to the pharmacy to ensure that there is no shortage” and “to ensure that these drugs are available to the French”.
The Minister of Health mentions “production problems”, “seasonal problems”, while certain drugs “are used more in winter”. “These stocks must be varied according to needs”, underlines François Braun, who promises that “industrialists are particularly mobilized”. And to answer the problem, he quotes “the will of the President of the Republic to relocate this production chain in France” and this, in particular for “drugs for which there is a significant criticality”. And to affirm that it is an obligation “for the patients but also for our industrial sovereignty”.
Fears already raised by the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, on the sidelines of a trip to Ardèche to the site of the Aguettant pharmaceutical laboratory, in order to announce the relocation of the production of 25 drugs deemed essential “in the coming weeks” . The Head of State notably cited morphine, pediatric amoxicillin and six anti-cancer drugs. These relocations will cover the entire drug production chain, including “very often the active ingredient”, he said.
A total of eight projects are officially to be implemented, supported by some 160 million euros in public and private investment, to tackle recent shortages. France has “experienced dependency” through Covid and the war in Ukraine, recalled the Head of State, according to whom “delegating to others the task of producing essential drugs in a world that fragment, it’s a dead end”. Taking “collectively aware of this industrial dependence”, the Head of State judged that it was “never good in general and even less understandable and acceptable (…) when it affects health”.
