Socialist presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo, traveling to Guadeloupe, has promised full coverage by social security of all medical costs related to chlordecone poisoning.
This pesticide, banned in France in 1990, continued to be authorized in the banana fields of Martinique and Guadeloupe by ministerial derogation until 1993, causing significant and long-lasting pollution of the two islands.
More than 90% of the adult population in Guadeloupe and Martinique is contaminated by chlordecone, according to Public Health France, and the West Indian populations have one of the highest incidence rates of prostate cancer in the world.
"The question of chlordecone is a real health scandal and the French state has taken far too long to recognize it," said the candidate, visiting an association of farmers and agroecological farm in Vieux-habitants (west).
A health scandal recognized as such by Macron
President Emmanuel Macron recognized this scandal during a trip to the West Indies in 2018. "One of the immediate measures to be taken is the full coverage of all medical costs related to chlordecone," she said.
Prostate cancers linked to exposure to chlordecone have only been recognized since December as an occupational disease.
Read alsoChlordecone and cancer: in the West Indies, women feel excluded and denounce "a trompe-l'oeil care"
Anne Hidalgo also felt that "financial support from the State for soil decontamination" was needed.
“It will take depollution on land but also at sea,” she insisted, since the pesticide has contaminated the rivers and the sea, and the entire food chain that results from it, leading to fishing bans in certain areas.
At the bedside of caregivers at the Pointe-à-Pitre University Hospital
Previously, the candidate visited in Pointe-à-Pitre the Memorial Act, the Caribbean center for expression and memory of the slave trade and slavery, inaugurated in 2015 by François Hollande.
It was to hold a public meeting at the end of the day in Basse-terre.
On the first day of her trip to Guadeloupe, she went to the bedside of the caregivers of the Pointe-à-Pitre University Hospital, strongly affected by the health crisis and theater of tensions around the vaccination question.
The @Chu_Gpe suffered the full brunt of the 5th wave of #Covid19.
I reiterate my support for the caregivers mobilized for 2 years who suffer from a lack of means and staff.
I will enable the training of 15,000 new doctors, 25,000 nurses and caregivers per year.
pic.twitter.com/5IPb976z2I
— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) February 12, 2022
The socialist candidate, credited with between 1.5 and 3% of the voting intentions, completely distanced herself from the rebellious candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who, when he came in December, had gone to support opponents of the vaccination obligation. on the picket line in front of the CHU.
Always in favor of the vaccine, she gave her support to the staff and to its general manager, Gérard Cotellon, who had been molested in early January by demonstrators.
