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There has never been a therapeutic trial, "defended this Tuesday, May 30, Professor Didier Raoult, former boss of the IHU of Marseille, interviewed on BFMTV following a forum of doctors accusing him of having conducted "the largest known 'wild' therapeutic trial " on hydroxychloroquine.
About his study published in April in preprint, that is to say not peer-reviewed, Didier Raoult said: "It's just an observational study", adding that this study, which concludes the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine to reduce the mortality of Covid patients, "can serve and it will serve for history".
The ban is 'a political decision'
Asked on BFMTV about the fact that he administered this specialty to Covid patients for several months after the ban by the High Council of Public Health, Didier Raoult replied: "I had perfectly the right myself, but also others, to prescribe hydroxychloroquine". The ban is "a political decision but does not engage the personal responsibility of doctors". The infectious disease specialist, who has been very controversial since the Covid-19 health crisis, even claims that "thousands of people who could have been treated have not been treated".
On Sunday, sixteen learned societies of medicine challenged the authorities in a forum in the newspaper Le Monde on "systematic prescription, to patients with Covid-19 (...) medicinal products as varied as hydroxychloroquine, zinc, ivermectin or azithromycin ... without a solid pharmacological basis, and in the absence of any evidence of efficacy'. More seriously, according to them, these prescriptions were continued "for more than a year after the formal demonstration of their ineffectiveness". The authorities must take "measures adapted to the mistakes committed", in the name of "patient safety" and the "credibility of French medical research", they conclude.
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Questioned by AFP, the office of the Minister of Health, François Braun, recalled that the latter and the Minister of Research and Higher Education Sylvie Retailleau had seized the prosecutor of the Republic of Marseille "on the unacceptable practices of the IHU". Since the convening of the founding institutions of the IHU by the ministers in October, assures the ministry, "inappropriate and dangerous prescriptions have ceased". "In view of the seriousness of these new elements, the two ministries will therefore have to hear again the founding institutions and the management of the IHU-MI quickly," said the ministry.
At the end of the Council of Ministers, the spokesman of the government, Olivier Véran, former Minister of Health, answered journalists' questions on the subject: "What is a certainty is that hydroxychloroquine has never worked against the coronavirus, alas". "If the conditions for conducting clinical trials have not been complied with ... it must be referred to the authorities. I think I did it in my time."
