2023-10-27 12:00:08
The entrance to the headquarters of the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) in Paris, October 17, 2017. ALAIN JOCARD / AFP
The IHU Mediterranean infection is convalescent, but far from being completely cured. This is the meaning of the new injunction published Friday October 27 by the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) against the university hospital institute (IHU) founded in Marseille by Didier Raoult and directed since September 1, 2022 by Professor Pierre-Edouard Fournier.
If the agency lifts the humiliating health police decision which has led to the suspension, for thirteen months, of all research involving humans (RIPH) within a structure of which this is one of the reasons for existence, it does not completely restore its scientific independence. The institute is authorized to take over the RIPH, which was a priority objective of its new governance. But the ANSM keeps it under “ reinforced surveillance ». And he will have to report to him every quarter, for at least a year. An injunction which also affects the University Hospitals of Marseille (AP-HM), founding member and main partner of the IHU, whose doctors form the bulk of the troops working at the institute.
The new decision of the ANSM testifies to the difficulty encountered by the management of the IHU in turning the page on the Raoult period, the excesses of which were noted in particular in the very severe joint report of the general inspectorates of social affairs and the research from August 2022. And to prove that the media professor, who has not retained any official function at the institute, no longer exercises influence in his former bastion. A complex position to defend while Didier Raoult still has access to the premises as an emeritus professor, and continues a collaboration there, several days a week, with the Japanese group Hitachi.
Keeps any lone rider out of the institute
The inspection of March 21 and 22, 2023, however, went well. It aimed to verify that the measures imposed by the ANSM and the supervisory ministries were correctly applied and that research involving humans was properly suspended. On these two subjects, the final report concludes that “the corrective actions implemented respond to the principle”. The management of the IHU and that of the AP-HM have submitted their researchers to training on the regulations concerning RIPH… And put in place procedures so that authorization requests now comply with the health code public.
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The inspection report, however, reveals internal reluctance. Three of the sixteen RIPH project leaders at the IHU refused to participate in the training sessions. Two of them renounced in writing their research activities involving patients. The third finally agreed to comply with the training measure, a few weeks after the inspections, lifting the threat of maintaining the ban on RIPH.
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