In the village of Druillat, in Ain, seven children were born without arms or without hands between 2009 and 2014. An abnormal concentration for the moment without explanation.
It all started with a confidential report sent by the Remera structure, specializing in the identification of malformations, to the health authorities and revealed by a report from France 2. This one reports an anomaly: a concentration 58 times higher than normal of children born with a defect in the arm or hand.
Undetectable on ultrasound
The report features eight-year-old Ryan, born without his right hand. A shock at birth since the ultrasounds had revealed nothing to the parents, Mélanie and Jonathan Vitry. “I cried, of course. And my husband fell in love with it,” recalls the mother.
Ryan is one of eight children living in the village of Druillat, within a 17-kilometer radius, to be born between 2009 and 2014 with a deformity. What alert the specialized structure Remera which sent a report to the health authorities at the end of 2014.
An unexplained phenomenon
For the moment, no medical explanation justifies this concentration of badly trained newborns in this commune. “We questioned all the mothers with a very thorough questionnaire on their lifestyle. The only common point is that they are all women who live in rural areas in the middle of fields of corn and sunflowers”, explains Emmanuelle Amar. , epidemiologist at Remera. She specifies that she has no explanation for this phenomenon except that the cause is neither genetic, nor medication or drug use.
Two years after the submission of this report, Public Health France replied that “enhanced vigilance seems necessary”, while contesting the methods of the investigation. But soon after, public subsidies to Remera, who has been working on this issue for 45 years, are cut.
A cut in subsidies that questions
“The consequences are very simple, it is the end of the monitoring of malformations, that is to say clearly the end of the alert too”, protests Emmanuelle Amar. The region simply replies that this is no longer part of its remit. As for Inserm, the research organization, it justifies the abandonment of the subsidies by affirming that “the contribution of the register for research is very low”. A comment that questions since two years ago, the former Minister of Health, Marisol Touraine, praised the work of Remera.
Alert of the heads of antenatal diagnosis, obstetrics, genetics, foeto-path: we lose the register of #malformations!
The countdown has started. Mrs @agnesbuzyn, time is running out. pic.twitter.com/LXQaGILHcO– REMERA (@AmarEmmanuelle) September 6, 2018
In the meantime, France 2 concludes its report by explaining that the town of Druillat in Ain is not the only one to suffer from this phenomenon. Indeed, doctors from Brittany and the Pays de la Loire have in turn alerted the authorities to the birth of several poorly trained children in the space of several months.
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