Hi, I’ve just been diagnosed with severe Vitamin B12 deficiency, and currently need injections twice a week. I visit France 4/5 times a year for 3 weeks at a time. Would anyone have information on whether injections are readily available from local doctors in France, and if so are they covered by the EHICS scheme? And as back up, would I legally be able to bring my own ampoules for self injection if necessary? Thanks!
You can bring your own ampoules and you can inject yourself. Or probably you can ask a pharmacien(ne) to inject you. Or ask a Dr, but it’s possibly easier to get the pharmacist to do it.
The French dosage seems slightly different - either 1 ampoule a day for 10 days or 3 a week for a bit over 3 weeks, then a lower top up treatment.
So it doesn’t look like something weird or complicated.
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Ask your GP if you can have tablets instead?
Or whether it would be OK to have tablets when in France and do the injections at home.
Bring your own ampoules and syringes. Yes everything is available without prescription at modest cost here but you will waste time that could otherwise be spent enjoying yourself!
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@annemurray1 - you have my sympathy. B12 deficiency has some pretty unpleasant symptoms.
After my diagnosis, I was told that the B12 had to be given by intramuscular injection as it was absorbed far more readily and successfully than via the digestive tract.
In fact my treatment was prolonged as it turned out that the first nurse had not been injecting into the muscle, and as a result my B12 levels had failed to increase.
I once took a vaccine with me to England and they refused to inject it, saying they had no guarantee as to what was in the ampoule. Don’t know what the French would do.
I believe it’s OK if you take an unsealed, full pack complete with all markings, as long as the medication concerned can be found on the NHS drug database.
b12 you can just do yourself.
A few years ago when still in the UK, I needed a series of three monthly B12 injections and the results were amazingly dynamic - like taking amphetamines or cocaine (which I’d not done for several decades) I was suddenly phenomenally get up and go, super dynamic.
Fast forward to several years later in France and I casually mentioned this to my MD during the 40 minute meeting which is ostensibly just to get routine prescriptions renewed. Was surprised when he prescribed a generous amount of B12 ampoules that can be taken in water. They’re supposed to be taken every ten days, but I never keep count and just down one if I’m low on energy and it seems like a while since the last dose. Don’t think it’s addictive!
Meantime, good luck with your B12 regime
Interesting thread. I suspect I’m low in B12, if I remember to take my tablets I notice a marked difference in my energy, although still not as I’d wish it. Both my mother and a sister have to have regular injections. I asked my MT to include this on a recent blood test and she refused saying it was expensive and not covered. I’m at a bit of a loss as what to do. I thought it was maybe a French thing but seems this is not the case from what you have all said.
Get assertive? Next time you see MT stare him/her firmly in the eye and say that your mother and sister have now been re-diagnosed with low B12 so you would like to be tested (sweet smile) You do not want a full vitamin panel (bilan) which you know is expensive (€175) but just the B12. This is only about €14.
Otherwise just go to a lab and get tested without prescription. Check price first but should be around €14, but no reimbursement.
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Thanks so much for these ideas Jane, tbh for 14euros I think I’d rather just pay than have to drive all the way to the doctors and back. I have a lab right next to work. I had no idea you could do that. Actually next to the lab is a Dr booth maybe I could get an appointment there, but she said it wasn’t covered by the secu anyway 
I wonder why she refused? I thought it was low iron but my ferratin came back just in normal so based on symptoms B12 is the next most obvious thing!
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Well double check the price, but I recall that the individual vitamin tests were around that. There are more comprehensive things, but the plain test is probably a good start.
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Just found this
Sans prescription, il en coûte entre 30 et 40 € (tarif fixé + frais de dossier variables) dans la plupart des laboratoires français.
Then 20 on another list. I’ll pop in and ask.
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Thank you Vero, good to know it would all be legal if I brought ampoules/syringes into France. I might try to get a letter from the consultant as insurance too.
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Unfortunately I don’t absorb tablets, that would be SO much easier! And currently the symptoms are coming back within 3/4 days of an injection, so I’d be a wreck by the end of 3 weeks.
Thank you. Does you know if I could buy B12 ampoules for injection over the counter in France?
Yes Brian, its not much fun. And the treatment seems to wake up all one’s nerve endings in a nasty process called ‘reversing out’ or ‘early treatment decline’, basically getting worse before it gets better! But at least i now know what it is, and that I won’t be arrested at the border carrying my gear…
Thank you for your good wishes! I wish I felt the rush you described 
, but I think my levels were so low that I’m only beginning to glimpse what normality feels like for a few hours at a time. Plus the ‘early treatment decline’/‘worse before it gets better’ phenomenon is a bit grim, and my gp and nurses don’t seem to understand it at all. Still, I’m on the right path even if it’s 2 steps forward and 1.5 steps back…
Sure to be better by the time I visit France in March.
Thank to all for your help. And to anyone who thinks they may be B12 deficient, my message is get tested! Seems like there’s a lot of undiagnosed folk out there, not necessarily needing injections, but not living their best lives either! UK gps appear to be woefully undereducated on the subject, hopefully French medics may be more aware.
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