In just a decade, France has greatly reduced its stock of protective masks. Here is a small timeline of what could be a real state scandal as the Covid-19 coronavirus epidemic currently hits our country.
On March 22, 2020, we mentioned the LVMH group intending to offer 10 million protective masks in France. The Bouygues group has also said it wants to donate one million masks. Above all, the government has announced an order for 250 million masks which will be delivered gradually. And yet, our needs would be 24 million masks per week!
However, a crucial question arises:why did our country find itself in shortage so quickly? As France Inter recalls, the former Minister of Solidarity and Health, Agnès Buzyn, was reassuring at the end of January 2020. According to her, France could not find itself in a situation of shortage in the event of a Covid-19 coronavirus epidemic.
And yet, on March 4, 2020, President Emmanuel Macron announced the requisition of all stocks as well as production protective masks. The goal? Distribute them to infected patients and healthcare workers. Two weeks later, the Minister of Health Olivier Véran claimed that there were 110 million masks left in state stocks. However, the fact is that there were more than a billion of them a decade ago.
It all started in 2005 when it came to preparing France for the risk of a pandemic What is the H5N1 avian flu? Faced with this risk, the Prime Minister at the time, Xavier Bertrand, understood the interest of building up a substantial stock. He even travels to countries such as China and Vietnam to understand how people protect themselves. With the agreement of President Jacques Chirac, the country is acquiring a large stock and is then one of those with the most masks per inhabitant in the world. The fact is that at that time, France captured a third of the world's annual production!
In 2009, the Minister of Health Roselyne Bachelot had to deal with the influenza A (H1N1) epidemic. At that time, our country had one billion surgical masks and 900 million FFP2 protective masks . However, the minister was the victim of a real bashing. The person concerned had been accused of having ordered too many masks, but also too many doses of vaccine and antiviral treatments. After the end of Xavier Bertrand's second term in 2011, our country still had 1.4 billion masks.
There followed what could be described as gradual disarmament of the health state through budget cuts. In reality, the real turning point in the management of the State stock came in 2013. The General Secretariat for Defense and National Security (SGDSN) modified the "doctrine for the protection of workers against highly pathogenic diseases with respiratory transmission". The FFP2 mask is considered to be more expensive and less comfortable than surgical masks.
At the same time, the equipment and management of masks are newly placed under the responsibility of employers. In other words, part of the management of masks is now the responsibility of the hospital system. In 2015, the situation was considered catastrophic and the stock was gradually sinking:900 million in 2012, 700 million in 2017 . In 2016, the health system modernization law is perhaps what sealed the fate of the management of masks. This law ordered the transfer of the missions of the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Establishment (EPRUS) to the newly created Public Health France body.
While EPRUS was very effective in the management of strategic stock, this was absolutely not the case for the Pharmaceutical Establishment unit of Public Health France. Thus, the State has been disarmed in its risk prevention policy , all for budgetary reasons.
