Medication 'kills 18,000 each year' in France

Medication 'kills 18,000 each year' in France

Medication causes more deaths per year in France than road accidents and suicides combined, according to expert testimony on Monday at the high-profile trial of a leading drug company boss, implicated in the deaths of hundreds of people.

The side effects from prescribed medication is responsible for at least 18,000 deaths each year in France, according to Dr. Bernard Bégaud, an expert witness at the trial of Jacques Servier, the 91-year-old founder of the Servier bio-pharmaceutical company, whose weight loss drug Mediator is believed to have killed hundreds of people.

“Every year there are 18,000 deaths directly linked to taking medication,” Bégaud told the court at Nanterre, where Servier is on trial for “aggravated fraud,” after hundreds of deaths were linked to Mediator.

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To put those figures in perspective, France’s national road safety authorities found that in 2012, 3,645 were killed in traffic accidents, and according to French weekly L’Express, there are an estimated 10,000 suicides in France each year.

http://www.thelocal.fr/20130527/medication-kills-more-than-road-deaths-and-suicides-in-france