Hourly Notes: Drugs out of stock

Stock-outs are becoming more common in pharmacies. And hospitals the situation seems even more problematic.

"The word shortage is perhaps a little excessive, but it is true that drug shortages are growing for about two years confirms Jean Cathalifaud, representing the National Union of Pharmacists of Haute-Vienne. "

The reasons? The pharmacist seems to ignore them, but what he can say is that it is sometimes called direct a laboratory for rapid troubleshooting, "it happened again there are only eight days for a product for the treatment of background of osteoporosis. "

About confirmed by a pharmacy in the center of Limoges, who like his colleagues, must manage somehow the situation: "there is no problem on major products such as cancer or treatments for AIDS. But we move more and more time on the phone or with physicians to deliver an equivalent product or with the laboratories to obtain service. Customers find it difficult to understand, and we find it difficult to explain a worsening situation. For stock-outs are now both on the duration and quantity. "

A lean. For one of three distributors that supply pharmacies in the Limousin, the moments of shortages are becoming more common even if it involves short periods of time: "The laboratory work and our lean inventories have nothing to do with what they were years ago. finds one of these distributors. Labs operate by quotas. For example so many boxes are delivered in September but no more. In case of rupture, 20 or 25 September, it will take delivery in October next. "

Even more worrying, the shortage affecting hospitals' supply problems are not new, says Philippe Morvan Chénieux clinical pharmacist. What is new is the length of these breaks for current products. Once laboratories were trying to help us out, but this is the case today. And for 2012, we announced already supply problems for products used in chemotherapy. The situation is quite worrying. "

Dependence on China. Supply difficulties are not only the organization but lean laboratories to globalization: "Most productions of active drugs have been relocated in emerging markets that provide first highest bidder .. . "Said the pharmacist Chénieux. French laboratories which are now limited to the processing of the product in the form of tablets, capsules, ampoules have therefore become dependent on producing countries.

Today, 80% of the active ingredients of drugs are supplied by China and India, against just 30% three decades ago. The most striking example of this evolution? The case of paracetamol, the pain as "eaten" in the world. Since the closure in 2008, the last manufacturing plant in France, we depend entirely on China for its production.