February 15, 2019.
For the Court of Auditors to take up such a case, it is because there is really a problem in France with antibiotics.
Antibiotics = consumption up 3% in France between 2005 and 2015
Our country is, as we know, one of the biggest consumers of antibiotics in the world. So, logically, our doctors are bigger prescribers than the others. From 2005 to 2015, the volume of antibiotics prescribed has further increased by 3%, after several years of successive decline at the beginning of the century.
If the Court of Auditors takes up such a file, it is obviously because it is concerned with the financial aspect of the file. If France consumed as many antibiotics as the Netherlands, which managed to reduce their use, our country would save 400 million euros per year.
But there is worse : antibiotic resistance is thought to be directly or indirectly responsible for 2,000 to 12,000 deaths per year. However, at least some of them could be avoided if antibiotics were used better. And the care needed by the sick would be less expensive.
Sell antibiotics individually in pharmacies
In its summary, the Court of Auditors therefore recommends the generalization of prescription assistance software for town doctors, in order to allow them to adjust the durations but also to vary the antibiotics used.
Moreover, antibiotics as they are packaged today in platelets and boxes of 10, 20, 40 never correspond to the prescription. Patients thus end up with unnecessary quarters or half-boxes which will, at worst, end their careers at the back of the medicine cabinet, at best, return to the pharmacist, without the unused drugs being used.
In order to avoid this nonsense, the Court of Auditors therefore recommends taking the necessary steps to deliver antibiotics to the unit, in pharmacies, in order to stick precisely to prescriptions.
Jean-Baptiste Giraud
Read also: 7 things to know about antibiotics
