The Marseille IHU, directed for a long time by Didier Raoult, has been the scene of many abuses, both socially and health-wise, according to extracts from a report relayed on Wednesday by the newspaper Provence. This report is produced by the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas), which depends on several ministries, including that of Health. It covers a wider field than a previous report, already scathing, published a few weeks earlier by the drug agency (ANSM).
Patients treated at the IHU are notably given “prescriptions which do not comply with the public health code, which is likely to fall within the scope of a criminal qualification”, according to an extract from this report cited by Provence. These prescriptions include in particular an anti-Covid-19 treatment based on hydroxychloroquine. Despite the ineffectiveness of this drug against Covid-19, Didier Raoult has promoted it since the start of the pandemic, thereby acquiring significant media celebrity.
According Provence still, the Igas report concludes that the IHU doctors were under pressure from their management to prescribe this treatment, as well as ivermectin, another drug whose anti-Covid benefits have never been proven. . On the scientific level, the report also denounces poor research practices: the IHU teams certainly publish a lot, but in journals of mediocre quality.
The choice of Didier Raoult’s successor criticized
This research would often be conducted in a biased manner, again under pressure from management. Young researchers resort to “voluntarily watering down results and data or removing things that don’t work, so as not to be pressured”, according to an excerpt from the report. This evokes, more broadly, a very authoritarian functioning of the management of Didier Raoult, who has put in place a “logic of submission”. Out of 300 employees interviewed, around fifty reported “a situation ranging from discomfort to great suffering related to their professional activity”.
This leak comes as this report has yet to be finalized with, in particular, the responses from the Marseille IHU. It also takes place a week before a meeting of the board of directors to give a successor to Didier. Raoult. A scientific committee recommended the name of Pierre-Edouard Fournier, a researcher already integrated for a long time at the IHU, but this choice was criticized, internally and externally, as not marking a sufficient break.