2023-05-03 03:10:09
Is this the end of supply tensions on abortion pills? Hearing in the Senate on the shortages of misoprostol, a drug necessary for the voluntary interruption of pregnancy (IVG) with medication, the Nordic Pharma laboratory defended, Tuesday, May 2, its management of the crisis, ensuring that the supply difficulties observed in the latter months for these drugs were now resolved.
« There is no shortage to fear, strictly speaking, of misoprostol or mifepristone in France today,” said Vincent Leonhardt, vice-president for continental Europe of Nordic Pharma, before the Senate committee of inquiry into drug shortages.
In mid-April, several organizations had sounded the alarm over the difficulties encountered by certain pharmacies for several months in obtaining misoprostol, a drug whose only two products authorized in France as part of a medical abortion, Gymiso and Misoone are marketed by Nordic Pharma.
Asked about this situation, the Minister of Health, François Braun, had then recognized difficulties in certain pharmacies to place orders “in some places”, but refuted the term scarcity. In reaction, a collective of associations, including Family Planning, had opened an online petition, calling on the Minister to “recognize the state of health emergency in terms of access to abortion”.
Deliveries in progress
Before the Senate, Nordic Pharma recognized a ” supply disruption “ for Gymiso, from November 28, 2022 to January 16, 2023, despite quota measures put in place in agreement with the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM). However, the laboratory stressed that this difficulty had not affected access to medical abortion, since Mioone’s stocks were at that time in sufficient number to overcome it. However, the situation became more complicated at the end of January after the appearance of new tensions, this time over deliveries from Mioone.
Questioned by the commission of inquiry, Nordic Pharma made an inventory of the stocks available on May 2 in France for these products. Regarding Gymiso, 35,000 boxes, corresponding to about a month and a half of consumption, are currently counted by the manufacturer. “This stock will be increased to more than three and a half months with the receipt of 60,000 boxes in early June”underlined Mr. Leonhardt.
With regard to Misoone, sold in two formats – one containing a single tablet, the other containing sixteen tablets – the situation remains more tense. The laboratory now has 34,348 boxes in one-tablet format, to which will be added this week, 6,400 additional boxes, equivalent to a total of almost two months of use. For the large format of sixteen tablets, the stock of which remains “very weak today”, only 500 boxes are available. But “4,000 boxes will be delivered this week, 800 at the end of June, i.e. four months of stock”continued Mr. Leonhardt, assuring that “The tensions are now over”.
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