It has been a long struggle for the collective “Health Transparency Initiative” (ITC), which campaigns for access to health data, but it has borne fruit. After being obliged to do so by the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents (Cada), the National Health Insurance Fund for Salaried Workers (Cnamts) had to resolve to publish the figures concerning the prescriptions of Mediator.
This anti-diabetes drug was used as an appetite suppressant throughout France, before being withdrawn from the markets in 2009, accused of being responsible for hundreds of deaths. According to the data, revealed by the site Mediapart, eight prescriptions out of ten, between 2008 and 2010, would have been carried out without the marketing authorization. Among the 44% of French doctors who prescribed the drug, 92% were general practitioners.
1.43% of the inhabitants of Bouches-du-Rhône
The inhabitants of the South of France seem to have been particularly concerned. Among the departments most fond of Mediator are Guadeloupe, Bouches-du-Rhône, Martinique, Alpes-Maritimes, Var and Corse-du-Sud. In the Bouches-du-Rhône, the antidiabetic was reimbursed to 28,545 patients in the last 12 months before it was stopped. “Reported to the population, this means that 1.43% of the inhabitants of this department have consumed this drug which would have already made more than a thousand deaths!”, Reports the daily newspaper Provence.
However, diabetes is more common in the North than in the South of France, recalls Mediapart. “This suggests that the prescriptions were strongly influenced by the proximity of the beaches”, infers the ITS, quoted by Provence. The Cnamts recalled, in a letter addressed to the collective outside the data, that these figures do not take into account diabetic patients treated only by diet.
