While the health crisis is worsening by the day in the country, will France have to face medicines shortage? With a growing number of sick tested positive for covid-19 and the growing number of people hospitalized in intensive care units, some medicines are highly requested, such as curare used in intensive care or even hypnotics.
Interviewed by Le Figaro, deputy director general at the Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament (ANSM) doctor Christelle Ratignier-Carbonneil has said “At the moment, the demand for some products is very high, especially for those used in intensive care, for which we only have a fifteen-day visibility window” before adding “We currently have 7,500 patients in ICU in France, we’ve never seen that before. This massive influx of patients in a very short period of time has skyrocketed the demand of 2000% for some medicines. Even though industrials increase the production to the maximum, stocks are melting. We should not forget that many countries are in our situation”.
As a matter of fact, other countries in Europe are threatened by this shortage as they are badly hit by the coronavirus epidemic as well.
“The continued availability of medicines, in particular those used for patients with COVID-19, is of critical concern” the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) said this past April 6.
In France, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe admitted this April 2 on TF1 tv channel that stocks were limited. He also conceded “real tensions” over some medicines such as cistracurium and two hypnotics, midazolam and propofol because of the “incredible [increase] of the consumption”.
“Everywhere across the world and at the same time, the consumption of products necessary to intensive care, whether medicines or consumables related to intensive care (such as) ventilator end pieces, boom in never imagined proportions” PM said on TF1 assessing the augmentation of the world demand to circa 2,000%. “It’s true, everywhere across the world, there are very harsh tensions over supplies in a certain number of molecules and medicines” he added.
Facing this strong demands, and this “extraordinary health crisis”, Le Figaro reveals that the EMA wishes each pharmaceutical company to now directly answer to the Agency for a better communication between the Industry and the European Union.
