Paracetamol, amoxicillin: shortages of pediatric drugs worry professionals

Infections increase in children and supply tensions from China, where raw materials are produced, combine at the end of 2022.

by Delphine Roucaute

Winter under pressure in pediatricians. “We talk a lot about the hospital, but, in town, I assure you that it is not simple,” insists Brigitte Virey, president of the National Union of French Pediatricians. In question, the superposition of influenza and bronchiolitis epidemics which multiply consultations and overtime, but also the shortage of the two flagship drugs in the management of pediatric pathologies: paracetamol and amoxicillin in oral form.

Tensions in the supply of paracetamol began at the start of the year, with the explosion of COVID-19 cases and influenza. It was then the adult form, 1,000 mg tablets of doliprane, produced by Sanofi, which was difficult to find. The supply break now affects pediatric forms, more precisely the 2.4 %doliprane, recognizable by its pink bottle and its graduated syringe facilitating its administration to young children, and the suppositories of the same brand.

It is indeed in children that demand explodes today, due to an extraordinary bronchiolitis epidemic, whose peak has far exceeded those of the last five years, and more generally from a Increase in infections.

The offer does not follow. Almost all of the pharmaceutical raw materials are today produced in India and China, health restrictions and the epidemic wave currently affecting Chinese territory necessarily slows global production. In addition, the war in Ukraine has repercussions on the production of glass, cardboard and aluminum, all three necessary for the packaging of drugs, whether in the form of syrup, powder or tablets.

To this is added the monopoly, in the pediatric forms of paracetamol, of Sanofi, which experienced a social movement for a month. The Lisieux factory (Calvados), where paracetamol is transformed and put into boxes, has never stopped working. But, in fact, the precious bottles arrive in droppings in the pharmacies. “I have ten boxes to spend the weekend, I will fight with the parents, halfway Philippe Besset, president of the federation of pharmaceutical unions of France, who exercises in Limoux, in Aude. And I do not Don’t know how we will spend the month of January. “Only the UPSA laboratory produces other pediatric forms, distributed in very small quantities. By domino effect, their products are also under tension.

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/Media reports cited above.