Delphine Schiltz / Photo credit: MONIKA SKOLIMOWSKA / DPA / DPA PICTURE-ALLIANCE VIA AFP 07:08, 07 June 2023
With a new prevention campaign launched this Wednesday, the French drug gendarme warns about our bad habits in the face of drugs. But what are the risks of a bad catch? Europe 1 put the question to Christelle Ratignier-Carbonneil, Director General of the ANSM."Medicines are not ordinary products. Let's not take them lightly." Posted on posters, video and on a new website, here is the new slogan of the health authorities, unveiled this Wednesday for their new prevention campaign. The National Agency for Drug Safety (ANSM) warns about our bad habits: consuming expired drugs, adapting doses, mixing products. Risky practices but unfortunately common, according to a study conducted by the French drug police.
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Toxic risk to the body
"Three out of ten French people adapt by themselves the dose or duration of the drugs that have been prescribed to them," says Christelle Ratignier-Carbonneil, director general of the ANSM. The study reveals that following your treatment to the letter and not touching it without the advice of your doctor is not easy for a number of French people. One in five patients even combines the products or takes more, to go faster. An overdose sometimes very risky, even for drugs considered ordinary.
"If I take the example of paracetamol, you can have risks for the liver that are very serious, which can even lead to severe hepatitis," says the director. Ditto for expired drugs: "You can have a decrease in the activity of the molecule. And because of this, efficiency, or you expose yourself to contamination. The molecule or everything that makes up the drug will degrade and will be toxic to the body," she adds. More than one in three French people think that after expiry drugs are not harmful.