Antidiabetics, antibiotics, anticoagulants, antidepressants, antipsychotics… More than two weeks after its publication, the list of 450 so-called essential medicines presented as the alpha and omega in the fight against shortages, by François Braun, Minister of Health, and Roland Lescure, Minister of Industry, raises criticism. “For these molecules, manufacturers will have to have four months of stocks”announced the first.
While most healthcare professionals contacted by The worlde greet the intention, they castigate the opacity of the method and choke to see certain drugs appearing there and others not. The most surprising being the presence of drugs positioned as being of no major therapeutic interest by the High Authority for Health, which have not been solicited, and those which have not been prescribed for a long time.
“There was a desire to leave prescribers. In itself, this is not necessarily a bad thing and it may explain why the French Society of Pharmacology and Therapeutics [SFPT] has not been consulted, but, in certain areas, it sometimes happens that the prescriptions are not completely in line with the most recent recommendations and that, consequently, this can lead to errors or some incongruities”underlines Dominique Deplanque, president of the SFPT.
Example with the presence of Fluindione (better known as Previscan). Since 2018 and an opinion from the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM), this anticoagulant has been banned from all new prescriptions. The ANSM was not asked either.
“Lack of professionalism”
The redundancy – a hundred – of certain drugs is also criticized. In fact, there are five drugs indicated in the management of gastroesophageal reflux disease. “Why put five, when they are totally substitutable? », wonders Bernard Begaud, expert in pharmacovigilance, for whom “If this list had been read correctly it would have been corrected”.
Conversely, in certain specialties, there are gaping holes. As in pulmonology where there is only one molecule to treat tuberculosis when three are needed. As for inhaled corticosteroids, such as Ventolin, to treat asthma, they are sorely lacking.
The French Society of Rheumatology did not fail to react, regretting that there are neither injectable corticosteroids, nor treatments against osteoporosis or inflammatory rheumatism. “We learned of the existence of this list through the press.regrets Thierry Schaeverbeke, its president. This singularly lacks either elegance or even professionalism. We must at least agree on the definition given to an “essential” drug. In my specialty, there are essential treatments which, if they were to run out, would send our patients back twenty years. »
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