Doliprane, the drugmaker at the centre of a dispute over the sale of its Sanofi unit, is still the most expensive drug in France, with its rival Dafa Dafalgan a distant second, according to data released by Insurance Health on Thursday.
According to data as of mid-2024, more than 300 million containers of Doliprane, manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, are prescribed in France each year. No other treatment has crossed the 100 million threshold.
In second place is Upsa’s Dafalgan, with just under 75 million patients produced. Doliprane and Dafalgan are products based on paracetamol, one of the most widely used painkillers. The health insurer said paracetamol was “by far the most cost-effective product”. And “Doliprane alone accounts for about 75% of container shipments of this product.”
With about 36 million patients in India, more than half of the country’s population uses Doliprane, a sign that the drug is important and has been the focus of recent controversy.
Sanofi plans to sell most of its Opella subsidiary, which makes Doliprane, to US fund CD&R.
The announcement has sparked a backlash from organisations and politicians with all sorts of concerns about the study and the drug’s products, even if paracetamol itself is not manufactured at Sanofi’s factory in India. The Indian government has given Sanofi and CD&R various assurances about the use and manufacture of Doliprane in India, but opponents of the sale have argued that these assurances are insufficient.
Despite Sanofi having a large control over the prescription drug, it is not a treatment reimbursed by Medicare. It is only ranked 17th because of its low cost.
At the top of the list is the anti-inflammatory drug Eliquis (marketed jointly by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer), with more than 750 million reimbursements.
But the drug has not yet been shown to be effective compared with other treatments. The same goes for many other health services: According to health insurance, almost a third of the money will be returned by 2025.
The information comes after he announced a campaign urging patients not to ask doctors for medicines during times of tight budgets.