While in the winter of 2023, millions of boxes of this essential antibiotic were missing from pharmacies, certain laboratories reportedly promised to sell amoxicillin to pharmacists on condition that they buy other drugs from their catalog… “Cash Investigation” questioned the former president of the Union of Community Pharmacists Unions in a document to be seen on January 9 at 9:10 p.m. on France 2.
Amoxicillin is the most prescribed antibiotic in France: an average of 50 million boxes are sold each year. In October 2023, in the midst of a shortage of this essential drug, the Minister of Health at the time, Aurélien Rousseau, explained on RTL that these supply shortages were partly linked to certain large pharmacies, which had overstocked.
“Cash Investigation” interviewed Gilles Bonnefond, president of the Union of Community Pharmacists Unions (USPO) from 2011 to 2021, on this subject. He explains that in fact, some pharmacies sometimes stock more than necessary, but according to him, this cannot explain the extent of the shortages.
Above all, he points to the responsibility of certain laboratories, which push pharmacists to overstock. He gives the example of a laboratory which, during the winter of 2023, offered boxes of amoxicillin to a pharmacy member of its union, on condition of also purchasing a certain volume of other drugs from its catalog: “This document is a commercial proposal from a generic manufacturer which clearly states: if you order 2,000 euros worth of generic medicines of different molecules, you will be entitled to 80 boxes of amoxicillin. If you order 4,000 euros worth of goods, you will have entitled to 160 boxes of amoxicillin So we bait the pharmacist And the laboratory, with this method, tries to make turnover by asking pharmacists to order their products. which they didn't need. All this to get amoxicillin!
For Gilles Bonnefond, this proposal is similar to “forced sale”a practice that he does not find “very loyal” : “At the moment when you are out of amoxicillin, making it an object of appeal to generate turnover for a laboratory is immoral.” According to him, this is not an isolated example. Some laboratories would therefore take advantage of this shortage, linked to a lack of production, to do good business.
In order to ensure the presence of essential treatments in pharmacies, the former Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, asked all players in the pharmaceutical chain to behave responsibly and had them sign, on November 23, 2023. , a “charter of commitment”. But this charter provided for neither control nor sanction. Shortages, notably of amoxicillin, continued during the winter of 2023-2024…
Excerpt from “Drug shortages: do the labs rule the roost?”, a document by Julie Lotz to be seen in “Cash Investigation” on January 9, 2025.
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