Focus on the French Health Products Safety Agency 
The French Health Products Safety Agency (Afssaps) was created by the law of 1 July 1998, passed to strengthen existing monitoring and health safety systems, in order to provide an improved response to the increasing diversity and interaction of health safety issues relating to healthcare products.
The Afssaps was set up in 1999, and benefited not only from the skills of its forerunner, the Medicinal Products Agency, but also from the fact that its scope of activity was extended to cover the whole range of healthcare products.
It serves the interests of public health thanks to the high level of expertise it can call upon, both internally and externally. It is thus able to produce not only scientific analyses and recommendations, but also tens of thousands of decisions a year, taken on behalf of the State by the Agency’s Director General.