INTERVIEW – Matthias Lacoste, father of 2 children, has started a hunger strike to denounce the lack of recognition of his illness by doctors and health insurance.
Since this weekend, Matthias Lacoste, in his thirties from Ardèche, has stopped eating to claim the “right to cure”. The young dad of 2 has had Lyme disease since he was a teenager. An illness that keeps him in bed for days or even weeks, preventing him from working.
But, according to him, occupational medicine does not recognize this disabling and poorly understood disease. After 3 months of sick leave, the medical adviser told him that his daily allowances will no longer be paid to him. “From June 19, I will find myself without pay. My personal situation is now shifting towards precariousness because a system does not recognize a disease that does exist ”, explains Matthias Lacoste to Why actor. For the young man, this announcement is a new obstacle to his recovery.
Diagnostic wandering
For more than a decade, he wandered in specialist offices to understand what he was suffering from. She was initially diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis. But the failure of treatments, each heavier than the other, and the worsening of his condition, call this diagnosis into question. It was not until 2014 that a doctor put the words on his suffering: he has Lyme borreliosis.
This infectious disease transmitted by the bite of a tick is caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. This is able to escape the immune system and diagnostic tests, a camouflage capacity that delays treatment and leads to underdiagnosis. The medical world is struggling to find effective answers to treat the sick. In France, 27,000 people are affected each year.
“I have no other choice”
“We do not have to live what we live today, it is not normal”, castigates this bank employee. To denounce “this injustice”, Matthias Lacoste then chose to start a hunger strike and stop his treatment. A decision known to his doctors. “They are not at all in favor of this hunger strike because they say that I am going to put myself in danger and that my condition may deteriorate. But today, I have no other choice. “
The young man announced his refusal to eat in a Youtube video titled “The Right to Heal” last week. In the space of a week, more than 16,000 people saw it, and more than 2,400 people subscribed to his Facebook page of the same name.
Meet the Health Guest with Prof. Christian Perronne (May 12, 2016)
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