The member of the presidential party announces us exclusively that a summary will be filed with the Council of State against a decree published in March which requires that chloroquine be reserved for the most serious cases in the hospital. She also says she is more than favorable to the prescription of this drug to treat patients with coronavirus.
Emmanuel Macron met this Thursday Professor Raoult, a fervent defender of hydroxychloroquine. What do you think ?
MARTINE WONNER. I am delighted. I was in contact with the President of the Republic and alerted him to the fact that France had taken a very bad path so far by not authorizing the prescription of hydroxychloroquine more widely. The treatment administered by Professor Raoult in Marseille is working and there are now 1,000 patients included in his treatment cohort. We also have positive feedback in Canada, in South Korea, in China.
But many doctors believe that Professor Raoult's study did not follow the rules for therapeutic testing.
I am well aware that this goes against certain dogmas but we confuse the time of research and the urgency of treating patients who may die. However, today, we count the dead. Deaths whose count is underestimated. In my regional daily newspaper in Alsace, we went from two to ten pages of obituaries. How many people have died at home from Covid-19 without even knowing it since people have not been diagnosed? Today, I am very angry because while we procrastinate, people die.
Some reputed infectiologists are much more cautious, even skeptical. What is your gaze?
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The fratricidal wars between professors of medicine with excessive ego do not interest me. What I do see, however, is that some of my general colleagues have self-prescribed chloroquine when it was still possible. This drug has been prescribed for over forty years, 80,000 French people use it every day to treat lupus or rheumatoid arthritis and we know its side effects. Under these conditions, why not prescribe this molecule which can save lives for all patients with Covid-19? This could be done in hospitals and clinics, following a strict protocol and routinely giving people an EKG to check if they have any contraindications.
Today, only severely ill patients can potentially benefit.
This is why several doctors have signed a petition with Philippe Douste-Blazy asking to soften the possibilities of prescribing chloroquine. Some of them and the members of the collective group Let them prescribe will file within a few days a summary proceeding in suspension with the Council of State to repeal the decree of March 26 which authorized the prescription of hydroxychloroquine only severe cases in hospital.
You yourself retweeted the petition of Philippe Douste-Blazy…
Yes, and that's when my trial started. I was blacklisted from a Telegram telephone loop for LREM deputies. I was insulted by some of my colleagues, accused of high treason because I did not agree with what the health directorate said. But it is not because we voted for a state of health emergency that we should allow ourselves to do anything. The government has already got its feet in the carpet with the management of masks. So today, despite all those who would like to put me back on the right track, I keep my freedom of speech and I say: let's leave it to the doctors who took the Hippocratic Oath to prescribe this medicine in their souls and conscience.
