The controversy swells around the pediatric oncology department of Garches, and the methods of the one who directs it, Dr Delépine, while the unit must be transferred to Boulogne. The family lawyer is taking legal action.
New twist in the case of the pediatric oncology department of the Garches hospital. The day after the evacuation of the striking parents from the hospital chapel, tensions are at their highest. The family lawyer has launched an appeal today, on the grounds that this transfer of service had been negotiated orally and had never been the subject of a written administrative decision.
Why have we come to this?
It all started in April when the Assistance Publique des Hospitals de Paris (AP-HP) made public its decision to transfer the pediatric oncology department from the Garches hospital, headed by Doctor Nicole Delépine, to the Ambroise Paré hospital in Boulogne, under the orders of Doctor Chevallier. A decision that the parents of the children treated in this service learned from the press, and which they strongly contest.
Doctor Delépine practices methods that do not comply with standard protocols to treat his patients. Children receive more individualized treatments, and above all, she opposes new methodologies that recommend the use of innovative molecules. Its main method, chemotherapy based on a molecule discovered in the 1970s, methotrexate. In addition, it refuses to bring patients into first-line clinical trials. A therapeutic alternative that parents who use it approve. But for the AP-HP, these are unsuitable and too old treatments. The service must therefore be transferred to Ambroise Paré hospital in Boulogne, once Professor Delépine has retired.
From the moment the AP-HP decides to transfer the service, events precipitate.
May 3
Grouped in the association Ametist, the parents lodged a complaint against X for “neglect of children” at the Nanterre Tribunal de Grande Instance. The purpose of the complaint, to prevent the definitive closure of this service.
June 26
Four parents start a hunger strike in the chapel of the Raymond Poincarré hospital in Garches, supported by the families of other patients. They want to stop the transfer of the service of Doctor Delépine, and perpetuate the reception structure and the methods used by the latter. They therefore want the Garches unit to be maintained on the basis of an agreement signed in 2004, the year it opened, which validated the Doctor’s methods. The conflict with the AP-HP is therefore open.
June 27
The AP-HP is organizing a press conference. Martin Hirsch, its managing director, and Prof. Loïc Capron, president of the Establishment Medical Commission are stepping up to the plate and responding point by point to the concerns of families. To calm the anger of the parents on hunger strike, they indicate that the transfer of the service is linked to medical considerations. and that “patients treated in the AP-HP departments for cancer must be treated in accordance with the recommendations of good practice, and within the framework of the authorizations issued by the health authorities.” As for the therapeutic trials for new treatments to which Dr. Delépine is opposed, “they respond to protocols evaluated and placed under the control of an ethics committee and scientific supervision. The inclusion of patients in a clinical trial is part of an ethical process based on informing patients and their informed consent to participate, and that of parents when it comes to children. ”
June 30th
The Director General of the AP-HP assigns the mediator of the Paris-Sud University Hospitals hospital group to “re-establish contact as serene as possible with the people who currently occupy the chapel of the Raymond-Poincaré Hospital, and provide them with explanations. likely to reassure them about the future organization of the care offered to their children, about their quality and their safety. “
July 4 and 5
Families are continuing their hunger strike. AP-HP responded explaining that she had attempted a dialogue with the families, and that Professor Chevallier, responsible for the service in Boulogne, had offered to meet the families to reassure them. He would have proposed to the Garches team to join his service, and promised not to impose methods on the parents, which they would not want. But the hunger strike of the four parents holed up in the hospital chapel continues. On the 5th, the AP-HP asked the Hauts de Seine police headquarters to intervene.
On July 10, the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance will have to rule on the appeal filed today, in order to determine whether the transfer of the service to the Ambroise Paré hospital in Boulogne is legally valid. A hearing that comes eight days before the planned retirement of Doctor Nicole Delépine, while the tension is at its height.
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