Health authorities have just ordered around ten pharmaceutical companies to pay a total of eight million euros for not maintaining sufficient stocks of medicines deemed essential, they announced on Tuesday, in a context of persistent shortages.
"The National Agency for the Safety of Medicines (ANSM) has imposed 8 million euros in financial sanctions on pharmaceutical laboratories that have not respected their 4-month safety stock," it declared in a press release.
These sanctions come in a context where the law has been tightened in recent years towards pharmaceutical groups in order to strengthen their obligations in terms of drug stocks.
These measures, taken at a time when drug shortages are worsening year after year, are forcing companies to maintain stocks of two months, or in some cases four months, of drugs deemed to be of major therapeutic interest.
These drugs are those for which an interruption of treatment could endanger the patient's life in the short or medium term.
The sanctions announced on Tuesday, which correspond to breaches noted in 2023, are unprecedented. For 2022, barely more than 500,000 euros in sanctions had been decreed.
This time, around thirty references are concerned and cover a broad therapeutic spectrum.
"The identified shortcomings concern, for example, antihypertensives, anticancer drugs, antimicrobials, neurology drugs, etc.," Alexandre de la Volpiliere, director general of the ANSM, explained to AFP. "Unfortunately, no class is spared by this phenomenon."
"As for the laboratories, the main ones are Biogaran, Sandoz, Viatris: the biggest sanctions concern generic drugs, which corresponds to the main supply disruptions that we have seen in recent years," he added.
One of the biggest sanctions, for example, affects Biogaran, the French giant of generic drugs, for insufficient stocks of a molecule against hypertension, irbesartan.
These announcements were welcomed by patient associations, concerned about the worsening shortages of treatments.
"This is a good sign because before the fines were much lower," says Catherine Simonin of France Assos Sante, which brings together many associations. She sees this as a sign that "the checks are being carried out."
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