The Council of the Order of Physicians interviewed a doctor accused of homophobia on Monday. On December 26, the practitioner published a Facebook post on a page intended for mutual aid between health professionals. In it, he describes the case of a patient he believed to have anal fissure and who actually suffers from a sexually transmitted disease (STD). The general practitioner explains that he referred the patient to a gastroenterologist for a fairly major surgical operation and that the preoperative blood sample revealed that it was in fact syphilis.
According to the doctor, his post is intended to warn the members of the group of a possible medical error, fortunately avoided in this case. He specifies that the patient is “not a ‘crazy’ type homo with overplayed manners, more like a common man,” which is why he did not think about the diagnosis of STD in the first place.
The doctor accused of “ordinary homophobia”
The very day of the post on the social network, Medhi Aïfa, president of the youth association of the refuge, an association that helps homosexual people, seized the Order of Physicians for ordinary homophobia. “We thought it was awkward at first, but in the comments below the post, this doctor insists on ‘very high pitched voices, men walking on a line while swaying, etc. . and this is what contributes to ordinary homophobia ”. Medhi Aïfa continues: “It is worrying that a doctor who has studied for years, can have such a reductive view of homosexuality and homosexuals in general”.
The implicated doctor defends himself by arguing that “the fact of not having understood that the patient was homosexual [l]’urged not to ask for certain exams. And therefore to potentially make a diagnostic error. According to him, if the routine examination before the operation had not identified the disease, the doctors could have missed it, which could have been detrimental to the patient. He denies being homophobic, while admitting to having used a clumsy word. The Council of the Order of Physicians is due to rule next Monday. He may file a complaint for lack of ethics. Otherwise, the association indicates that it is not sure to sue civil, if the case is debated publicly.
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