While the United States is going through a deadly health crisis due to opioid addiction, the ANSM reveals that at least 4 deaths due to an overdose of painkillers are recorded each week in France.
“The prevention of risks related to opioid analgesics is a major concern for health authorities”, concedes the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) in a recent report. While the show Correspondent lifted the veil on Wednesday February 21 on the biggest health crisis ever to occur in the United States, the Medicines Agency is showing its cards and anticipating the questions of French viewers about the consumption of opioid analgesics in France.
Nearly 200 deaths linked to an overdose of opioids are indeed recorded every day in the United States. The pictures of‘Correspondent illustrates the extent of the scandal by showing ordinary people, of all ages (including children) and social classes, having become addicted to these painkillers that had been prescribed to them and capable of going into debt, supplying themselves on the black market, falling into heroin, or even worse, collapsing in the middle of the street, in a supermarket or driving, struck down by an overdose. What about in France? According to health insurance, nearly 10 million French people were prescribed an opioid analgesic in 2015.
The French and opioids
“The ANSM observes an increase in misuse, as well as poisonings and deaths linked to the use of opioid analgesics, whether weak or strong. However, the situation is not comparable with that observed in the United States and Canada,” the report said. “In 2017, the most consumed opioid analgesic in France was tramadol, then codeine in combination and opium powder combined with paracetamol. Then comes morphine, the first strong opioid analgesic, oxycodone, now consumed almost as much than morphine, then fast-acting transdermal and transmucosal fentanyl”.
Between 2006 and 2017, the prescription of strong opioids increased by approximately 150% (oxycodone marks the largest increase). “Opioids have a major and undeniable interest in the management of pain and remain less consumed than non-opioid analgesics (paracetamol, aspirin, NSAIDs)”, assures the Medicines Agency, conceding all the same that “the consumption of opioid analgesics can be accompanied by serious complications”. Particularly in patients consuming these opioids to relieve pain, who are sometimes led to develop a dependency and circumvent the initial indications for use.
At least 4 deaths per week
Result: “the number of hospitalizations linked to the consumption of opioid analgesics obtained on medical prescription increased by 167% between 2000 and 2017, rising from 15 to 40 hospitalizations per million inhabitants. The number of deaths linked to the consumption of opioids increased by 146%, between 2000 and 2015, with at least 4 deaths per week”.
“Today, there are more overdoses in patients with chronic pain than in drug users”, alarmed in The Parisian Nicolas Authier, President of the French Observatory of Analgesic Medicines. Anyone can sink. “This is not a problem specific to drug users. We are talking here about women (60%) and men aged 40, 50, 60, with no history of drug use. Confronted with chronic pain, with the some of the psychiatric comorbidities, for others family problems or at work, they find themselves drawn into the irreversible spiral of addiction”.
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