While the monkeypox epidemic continues to progress, political figures, association representatives and citizens are asking for the creation of a senatorial commission of inquiry into the government's action in the fight against this new virus, which they qualify as "insufficient", in a column published Tuesday in the online newspaper HuffPost.
“The action of the government (…) is totally insufficient given the scale of the situation”, accuse the signatories, criticizing “the extreme slowness in getting started” and the “undersizing” of the vaccination campaign, as well as "the absence of transparent information" on the "number of vaccines available" or "upcoming orders".
Among the authors of the platform are the deputies Sandrine Rousseau and Danielle Simonnet (Nupes), the first deputy mayor of Marseille Michèle Rubirola (EELV), the presidents of the associations AIDES, Act-UP Paris and Médecin du Monde.
They ask senators to set up a commission of inquiry, as was the case in 2020 on the management of the Covid-19 health crisis.
According to the latest report from Public Health France, published on Friday, 1,955 confirmed cases have been recorded in France since May 20, the date on which a first case was detected on national territory.
More than 42,000 doses of vaccine destocked
Faced with this surge in cases, more than 42,000 doses of smallpox vaccine were destocked and vaccination was extended to those most at risk: men who have sex with one or more men, trans people with multiple sexual partners, sex workers and professionals working in places of sexual consumption.
However, the “available slots remain too few everywhere on the national territory”, judge the authors of the forum, who ask parliamentarians to “end the secrecy on the government strategy” in order to “evaluate the quality of this strategy ".
Faced with criticism, the Minister of Health François Braun had assured at the end of July that France had "not fallen behind" and affirmed that the stock of smallpox vaccines was "very substantial".
However, he refused to specify the extent, pleading the "secret defense" because smallpox can be used as a biological weapon.
Monday, after a meeting with the association AIDES, the minister promised on Twitter that the "mobilization throughout the territory continues to increase".
Read alsoVaccination against monkeypox: finally no deadline for the second dose
Worldwide, the first deaths linked to the monkeypox epidemic were recorded outside the African continent.
Two deaths have been counted in Spain, one in Brazil and one in India, without alarming the scientific community.
