His image is tarnished over the weeks.
The IHU of Marseille, directed for a long time by Didier Raoult, has been the scene of many excesses, on the social as well as on the health level, according to extracts from a report relayed this Wednesday by the newspaper La Provence.
This report, to which AFP did not have access, 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 respect the code of public health, which is likely to fall under a criminal qualification”, according to an extract from this report cited by Provence.
Under pressure to prescribe hydroxychloroquine
These prescriptions include in particular an anti-Covid treatment based on hydroxychloroquine.
Despite the ineffectiveness of this drug against Covid, Didier Raoult has promoted it since the start of the pandemic, thereby acquiring significant media celebrity.
According to La Provence, the Igas report concludes that doctors at the IHU were under pressure from their management to prescribe this treatment, as well as ivermectin, another drug whose anti-Covid benefits have never been observed. 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.
Read alsoDidier Raoult, a frenzy of publications and practices in question
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".
The choice of successor is controversial
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.