Sunflower oil, toilet paper, mustard… Supermarket shelves were affected by major shortages in 2022. For their part, pharmacies were also forced to experience supply tensions, due to the Covid-19 outbreak and war in Ukraine.

Only here: the lack of certain drugs is not ready to be satisfied in 2023, several references being still difficult to find, or even simply out of stock. In question ? The explosion of contamination linked to the virus in China, a very large drug-producing country… On which many countries depend for treatment.

Jérôme Martin, co-founder of the Observatory of Transparency in Drug Policies, summarized the situation with our colleagues at franceinfo: “China has announced that it is asking factories specializing in foreign trade to stop export of paracetamol-based medicines to reserve it for the domestic market”. Paracetamol is therefore one of the main victims of these shortages… But far from being the only one.

According to the list of the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM), updated at the end of December 2022, many references are still in supply tension or out of stock. In our slideshow below, learn about all the types of hard-to-find drugs in 2023.

Thursday, December 29, 2022, the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France (FSPF) announced the holding of a “weekly meeting with the National Medicines Safety Agency and the General Directorate of Health” to deal with this exceptional situation.