They demanded the maintenance of an oncology service which should close after the retirement of the head of the service with controversial practices.
The four parents who had been on hunger strike for 10 days in the chapel of the Raymond-Poincaré hospital in Garches (Hauts-de-Seine) were evacuated on Sunday morning by the police. They were protesting against the closure of the hospital’s childhood cancer unit.
These parents demanded the continuation of the specific methods of the unit specializing in bone cancer in Raymond-Poincaré, which must close after the retirement of Nicole Delépine, the head of the service.
Its methods, which the AP-HP disavows, have been the subject of controversy for several years. They are based on an individualized approach to treatments and a rejection of clinical trials and standardized protocols. These are the methods that the parents of children with cancer defended, but the AP-HP remained categorical: for her, clinical trials “respond to protocols evaluated and placed under the control of an ethics committee and ‘scientific supervision’.
The AP-HP thus declared at the end of June “to understand the concern of these parents which could be heightened by inaccurate information, but considers that its mission cannot be to let them put themselves in danger within one of its establishments ”. The Public Assistance-Hospitals of Paris (AP-HP) would have asked “the Prefect of Police and the Prefect of Hauts-de-Seine to intervene to prevent a further deterioration of the situation”.
The oncology service should be transferred to the same department, to the Ambroise-Paré hospital in Boulogne-Billancourt, as should the patients who so wish.
Following the evacuation, contradictory testimonies appeared between the AP-HP and the parents who slept in the chapel of the Hospital. The parents speak of an “extremely violent” evacuation while the hospital says that everything happened “in serenity”.
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