This is a problem that has been going on for weeks. On his Internal sitet, l‘Observatory of Transparency in Medicines Policies (OTMeds) is alarmed by a shortage in France of misoprostol, a molecule used for medical abortions. And not only elsewhere. In the columns of Releasethis Saturday, the president of Family Planning, Sarah Durocher, also evokes “difficulties in the supply of abortion pills such as mifepristone”.
Lack of reaction from the government?
It was the players in the field – associations fighting for the right to abortion, liberal doctors and midwives who sounded the alarm. But these were ignored by the authorities, believes the OTMeds which rraises the first alerts to March 5 and points to “the silence, the wait-and-see attitude and the amateurism” of François Braun, the current Minister of Health. “These alerts are worrying because they constitute an obstacle for people who want to have an abortion,” said Sarah Durocher, still in Liberation. French law provides that anyone who wishes to have an abortion can choose the method (depending on the deadlines), but today this is no longer the case. »
In this case, the OTMeds also deplores the opacity in the management of this shortage by the French health authorities, to the point that it is difficult to measure the extent of the shortages of misoprostol, says Jérôme Martin, co-founder of the observatory. , still in Liberation. Thus in Lille, while it was difficult to find misoprostol-type abortion pills at the beginning of April, “the situation seems to have since [..] without anyone knowing how”, resumes Jérôme Martin. Are the pills coming through the normal circuit again? Has there been a rebalancing between regions? “.
In his press release, as in the interview given to Release, the OTMeds still gives a possible factor of shortage: misoprostol is a drug under patent. Its production is concentrated on a single site. “If there is an industrial concern, an impurity on one of the sites, few or no factories can take over. Production is therefore slowed down for weeks or even months. We often hear, with the explosion of shortages, that drugs are not expensive enough in France, explains Jérôme Martin daily, calling for this system to be changed.