The president of the AP-HP and the director of the Institute for Mediterranean-Infection engaged for a month, a fierce battle in the media and legal.
Nothing goes between the director of the Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP), Martin Hirsch and professor of marseilles Didier Raoult. The controversial boss of the Institute for Mediterranean-Infection has shown this Thursday, have filed a complaint with the parquet de Paris against Martin Hirsch, who accused him of “false testimony” at the beginning of July.
the culmination of a tension that lasts from the 24th of June between the two men, this complaint has been filed for “slanderous denunciation”. The Express comes back, in four acts, on this matter.
24 June : the returns of the Pr Raoult before the Commission
it All starts on the 24th of June last, while the very media professor Didier Raoult, known for his positions strongly in favour of the controversial hydroxychloroquine, speaks in front of the parliamentary Commission of inquiry on the management of the Covid-19 the question of mortality during the epidemic. Providing support on a “work” available online, he thus indicates that this mortality in intensive care units French has reached 43%.
summer Offer : Take advantage of the special offer 2 months for 1€ I subscribe
READ ALSO >> Fact-checking : the eight counter-truths of Didier Raoult in the face of the commission of inquiry
“For us, it was 16% “, he says then, without specifying its sources are accurate. Contacted by AFP, a few days later, the entourage of the Pr Raoult had finally returned to the register results Reva (european research Network in artificial ventilation), as contained in the “report of the crisis unit of the AP-HP in the 14 April”. In this document, dating back three and a half months, the period of the peak of the epidemic in France, the percentage of deaths in the icu was assessed at 43% to AP-HP and 41% outside AP-HP.
“The task is passed to the second plan”, does not hesitate to tackle the doctor during his hearing, stating that a patient chinese 80 years of age, considered to be the first patient by the coronavirus in Paris was presented “at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in paris” was “back home”, then was “income after 7 days” and was “come to die in a hospital”.
26 June : Martin Hirsch accuses Raoult “false witness”
in the Face of these figures, the director of the AP-HP does not take long to react. These statements “appear to amount to a false testimony”, accuse-t-il in a letter to the president of the national Assembly, on the 26th of June. Two days after the intervention of the Pr Raoult before the Commission, Martin Hirsch wrote to Richard Ferrand “that he [it] appears to be essential that the work of the commission can be based on elements of the factually false, and that the suites that are required can be given”.
In this letter, Martin Hirsch disputes in particular two passages in the hearing of the Pr Didier Raoult for the commission of inquiry on the 24th of June : on the one hand, its estimate of the death rate of patients in the icu, and on the other, on the patient’s chinese 80 years old hospitalized in Paris in late January and died mid-February – the first death of the Covid-19 officially registered outside of Asia.
READ ALSO >> Coronavirus : the justice, a new arbitrator of the management of the crisis by the power?
“These declarations, which put seriously into question the AP-HP, made under oath, seem to me to amount to a false witness,” accuses Martin Hirsch in the letter. The director of the AP-HP also provides for having in his possession “any data that up to 43% mortality in the réanimations of the AP-HP”, without specifying how many mounts this rate. “On the other hand, there is to date no published study which analyses compared the mortality rates in the intensive care unit, assessed in controlled conditions, between hospitals in paris and marseille”, he adds.
Finally, “the single-patient chinese of 80 years which may be referenced in the Pr Didier Raoult was admitted on January 25, 2020 to the european hospital Georges Pompidou. It has never been sent home,” says Martin Hirsch in his letter. It reminds us that this patient was then transferred “to the Bichat hospital, national reference centre”, where his daughter, also ill, has also been taken care of before heal.
6 July : Martin Hirsch challenging the figures of Raoult before the Commission
During his own hearing before the Commission of inquiry, on July 6, Martin Hirsch does not hesitate to put again in question the figures announced a few days earlier by Didier Raoult. Wielding the data of Si-Vic, the system of the ministry of Health for tracking patients in the event of a health situation to be exceptional, the director of the AP-HP indicates that the rate of mortality in the intensive care unit “appears today on public Assistance 25%”. According to another source, the cohort of patients comprised by the AP-HP for the monitoring of patients supported in its 39 hospitals, “we believe this rate between 31% and 35%,” adds Martin Hirsch. Figures far short of the 16% mentioned by Didier Raoult.
On the report of the crisis unit of the AP-HP in date of April 14, 2020, Martin Hirsch confirms the authenticity of the document, but wished to emphasize that he was dating “it was nearly three months and was so out of date”. At the time, according to this same document, about half of the patients hospitalized in resuscitation there were still admitted, and “knew not yet the outcome of their disease [death or healing], adds the director. “Nobody can give today the mortality rate final : we still have patients who are in intensive care and we hope to save them,” he insists. “My role is not to make the police force percentages, but if it is to [influence] the commission of inquiry on the basis of data to be biased and partial, it is my role to respond promptly”, slice-t-he front of the deputies.
READ ALSO >> Coronavirus : the hospitals of Paris “never confronted with a phenomenon of such magnitude,”
The Pr Raoult has been “serious accusations” in “and implied that we would be criminals, because we would have left to die of patients (…) because we would not have given” hydroxychloroquine to patients, pounds still Martin Hirsch in front of the commission, noting that “comparisons of mortality rates were relevant only if they took into account the number of patients admitted, the severity of the symptoms, or even of the proportion of older patients.
When you have “little patients to take care of, you can put patients lighter in resuscitation”, which “has an influence on the mortality rate”, says Martin Hirsch on July 6, while reaffirming that the first patient suffering from coronavirus in Paris, a chinese tourist 80 years of age, had certainly not been regarded as a suspect of Covid” in a first time, but that he had been “treated as such” at the hospital Georges-Pompidou and was “never out of the hospital” before his transfer to the hospital Bichat, contrary to the assertions of Didier Raoult.
30 July : Raoult files a complaint against Hirsch
After several weeks of radio silence on this case, professor Didier Raoult was finally informed that a complaint had been filed with the prosecutor’s office of Paris against Martin Hirsch for “slanderous denunciation”, a-t-we learned this Thursday from several sources. “Up here, it was a matter of scientific controversies which have always existed, professor Raoult has always been willing to spark controversy but here it goes beyond the scientific sphere”, said ms. Brice Grazzini, the lawyer for the physician of marseilles, who confirms having lodged a complaint on Wednesday.
READ ALSO >> The tip of the Pr. Raoult to publish massive amounts of studies and get funding
Since the beginning of the epidemic, the defence by Didier Raoult of hydroxychloroquine has sparked many controversies in the scientific world. “There, it is different, my client is liable to five years imprisonment and 75 000 euros fine”, has added to its board. According to him, Martin Hirsch has “accused the Pr Raoult false testimony under oath then that he relied on the statistics of the AP-HP”.
Read our complete file
The public hospital in the face of the coronavirus
Coronavirus : the number of patients in the icu in a slight increase in Journal of health care facing the coronavirus : “This is the real third world war” Covid-19: Ciotti and the government écharpent on hospitalization of the elderly
“there is no match between the AP-HP and AP-HM, the Pr Raoult was talking about just a lack of means, the fact that we had anticipated things by testing more to Marseille than elsewhere”, stressed Me Grazzini.
