Emmanuel Macron will meet on Thursday April 22, 2021 with caregivers and patients at the Foch hospital in Suresnes, to discuss the care of patients who suffer from persistent symptoms of Covid. – Raphael Lafargue-POOL / SIPA
The President of the Republic will go to the Foch hospital in Suresnes on Thursday, in the western suburbs of Paris. An establishment which has the particularity of having coordinated several services (pulmonology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, ENT) in order to diagnose and take care of patients with long-term Covid. An affection with still poorly understood causes.
Emmanuel Macron will discuss with doctors, nurses and physiotherapists who treat these patients suffering from persistent symptoms of Covid-19 in order to discuss their care.
A quarter of infected people affected
WHO estimates that a quarter of people infected with Covid-19 have symptoms that persist for a month and that one in ten people experience symptoms after three months (loss of taste or smell, headache, fatigue, pain muscles, shortness of breath, sensation of cerebral “fog”…). Some are still affected a year later and wander from doctor to doctor.
“The adaptation of the health system to ensure the management of the long-term Covid and the initiation of the research necessary to know these symptoms is today a major challenge”, underlined the Elysee.
“Facilitate recognition as an occupational disease”
The National Assembly unanimously voted on February 17 a resolution to recognize and deal with the long-term complications of Covid-19. It also recommended to “facilitate the recognition as an occupational disease of the affections caused by the serious forms” of this disease in cases where it would have been contracted at work.
At this stage, the government has granted automatic recognition as an occupational disease to the only caregivers sick with Covid-19 with respiratory sequelae. A device considered too restrictive by many elected officials.
Towards a “personalized” approach?
The Secretary of State for Pensions and Occupational Health, Laurent Pietraszewski, told deputies in February that the government was “ready to examine the evolution of its system” and stressed that the number of “long Covid” could reach “Several hundred thousand” in France.
The High Authority for Health had issued in February management recommendations, suggesting a “personalized” approach coordinated by the attending physician and a “central place” for rehabilitation, especially respiratory.