A police file and possible legal consequences. In a damning report published on Monday, the General Inspectorate for Social Affairs (Igas) and its counterpart for higher education and research (IGESR) identify a whole series of dysfunctions at the IHU in Marseille at the time it was run by a Didier’s iron hand. Raoult.
This report “highlights serious dysfunctions” within the University Hospital Institute of Mediterranean Infections (IHU-MI), created in 2011 and directed by Professor Didier Raoult until the end of August. “Several elements” are “likely to constitute crimes or serious breaches of health or investigative regulations,” ministers Sylvie Retailleau and François Braun write in a joint press release. They specify that they have seized the Marseille prosecutor’s office.
This report, commissioned by the executive, covers a broader field than a previous, already scathing one, published a few months ago by the Medicines Agency (ANSM) which had already taken legal action.
Hydroxychloroquine at the center of the debates
In the first place, “certain medical and scientific practices (…) that do not respect current regulations and that can generate a risk to the health of patients” are pointed out.
The inspectors point out that patients treated in the ICU for Covid-19 or tuberculosis were administered “molecules outside their marketing authorization.”
These prescriptions included, for example, a treatment based on hydroxychloroquine, banned since May 2020. Despite the ineffectiveness of this drug against Covid, Didier Raoult has promoted it since the start of the pandemic and has gained worldwide notoriety. He had already received a reprimand from the College of Physicians for having proposed this treatment.
The report also confirms that IHU doctors were pressured by their management to prescribe this treatment, or ivermectin, another drug with anti-Covid benefits that have never been proven.
“Race to Post”
For clinical research, the report denounces “serious deficiencies (…) until a very recent period (end of 2021-early 2022)”: thus, several studies have been carried out without respecting the provisions of the public health code for research involving the human person
“These facts are likely to be classified as criminal,” insists the document.
“When you do research, you have to follow the protocols. There’s been a lot of research that’s been done in the IHU that just hasn’t respected that. And then there’s a component about the care that was delivered in the IHU that may have been a loss of opportunity in patients”, insists on our antenna Víctor García, a health journalist from The express.
Still on the scientific level, the report also denounces bad practices: the UHI teams were in a “publishing race strategy”, but in poor quality journals.
This investigation was often carried out in a biased manner, again under pressure from management. The young researchers came to “voluntarily dilute the results and data or delete things that do not work, so as not to be pressured,” according to the report prepared after nearly 300 interviews with collaborators.
authoritative management
The joint report by Igas and IGESR also evokes a very authoritarian functioning with an “omnipresent” Didier Raoult, leaving “little room for contradiction” and “a logic of submission”, a source of harassment and discomfort at work.
“In the opinion of several of the people we met, the location in the same place completed the constitution of a model where devotion, subjection, sometimes the fear of being summoned to the place and without delay, the almost systematic propensity to verify what is done, by whom and when, they install a logic of submission that some have consented to and that, for others, is forced”, we also learn.
A situation supported by several testimonies, but tempered with BFMTV by Karim Djebali, secretary of the Sud Santé APHM union.
“Dr. Raoult was a very demanding person. Colleagues told me that from time to time he raised his voice, but the truth is that I never had any comment regarding the staff that Dr. Raoult was violent or aggressive, ”says the latter.
Degraded financial situation
Then, the financial situation of the foundation is also mentioned, which “is gradually deteriorating.” According to the authors of the report, “operating income has decreased slightly since 2017, going from 7.9 million euros to 7.3 million euros” while, for its part, “total operating expenses are increasing, from 7.2 million euros in 2017 to the 8.8 million euros forecast for 2022”, that is, an increase of 22%.
“One of the new director’s action priorities will be to work on a new realistic economic model,” the document insists.
On this subject, the ministers concerned “will soon convene the leaders of the founding establishments and the director of the IHU-MI”, who is now Professor Pierre-Édouard Fournier, to implement “as soon as possible a voluntary action plan take into account all the recommendations”.
The latter, a specialist in infectious diseases at the institution, worked under the tutelage of Professor Raoult. His appointment had generated criticism, both internal and external, for not marking a sufficient break.
What suites?
In the near future, the prosecutor of Marseille, seized by the ministers, will have to rule on the possible legal consequences after reading the conclusions of this report.
“He will take care of the file, if necessary he will ask the police to hold hearings, to listen to witnesses. The role of the prosecutor is to decide on an orientation, whether to prosecute or not,” Florence Rouas, a criminal, explains to BFMTV. attorney.
The goal, the government insists, is for the IHU “to return to being a place of scientific and medical excellence.” “Full compliance with the action plan and current regulations will be subject to regular controls by the two ministries and will condition the continuation of the IHU-MI’s activity and its financing by the State,” warn the ministers.
What is also at stake, “is the ICU model, which was at risk of being flawed while a tender for the creation of six new UHI is carried out” in France, it was specified in the office of the Minister of Health.
Source: BFM TV
