A report worries about the downgrading of “France for drugs”

Research suffocated by the lack of resources and administrative complexities, industrial production too often relocated abroad, opacity in the setting of prices, growing shortages in hospitals and pharmacies … “France for drugs is not doing well”, is alarmed the report of the information mission on the drug of the National Assembly, presented Wednesday, June 23. The result of six months of work, the diagnosis – which spans 220 pages, and includes some thirty proposals – is certainly not new.

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In recent years, there have been many alerts on the decommissioning of France – by institutional actors as well as by civil society actors, and even by pharmaceutical manufacturers. But “The report drawn up, rather incisive, which denounces at the same time the lack of political strategy on the drug, the public under-investment or the financialization of the sector of the pharmaceutical industry, clashes with certain more conformist public reports”, notes the health economist, Nathalie Coutinet, lecturer at Sorbonne Paris-Nord University.

Without being the revealer, the health crisis has shone the spotlight on the flaws in the sector

Should this be seen as a consequence of Covid-19? Without being revealing, the health crisis has shone the spotlight on the flaws in the sector. Like the shortages of anesthetics and painkillers observed in hospitals during the first wave of Covid-19. A subject far from being anecdotal, drug supply disruptions have been on the rise for several years.

“The number of drugs of major therapeutic interest declared to be out of supply has thus increased from 404 in 2013 to 1,499 in 2019, and has multiplied by 20 in ten years”, underlines the report, which recommends, in addition to the establishment of a “Consolidated and computerized” in the supply chain of essential drugs, the increase in the penalties provided for against laboratories in the event of a stock shortage.

Another remedy recommended by the rapporteurs: the creation of a non-profit group or a network of public and private actors, capable of producing essential drugs subject to the risks of shortages.

A high commission for health products

In general, “We must overhaul our entire drug chain”, warns the deputy Jean-Louis Touraine (LRM), co-rapporteur of this fact-finding mission, who denounces the “Small measures” taken over the past two decades, which “Patch up, where you need new clothes”. For this, it is first of all a question of compensating “The absence of a comprehensive drug strategy” in France, explains MP Pierre DharrĂ©ville (GDR), who chairs the fact-finding mission.

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