Despite the reserves, expressed among others by unions who doubted the capacity of this internal candidacy to stimulate a real change, the board of directors finally gave its approval to this replacement.
Le Monde with AFP
Professor Pierre-Edouard Fournier, specialist in infectious diseases, will replace the controversial Didier Raoult at the head of the University Hospital Institute (IHU) Marseillais Mediterranean infection, in the heart of many controversies for two years around the COVVI- 19, Ihu.
announced Wednesday July 13
Despite the reserves, expressed in particular by unions who doubted the ability of this internal candidacy to stimulate a real change, the administrators finally validated the choice of a commission specially set up for this succession and chaired by the Former boss of Renault, Louis Schweitzer. The three representatives of the State abstained, we learned from a member of the board of directors wishing to remain anonymous.
Aix-Marseille University, one of the six founding members of the IHU, “takes note of this appointment”: “We remain vigilant and the visits to the CHSCT will continue”, reacted its president, Eric Berton, interviewed by the agency France-Presse.
“Today, there is an exceptional tool made by an extraordinary man. To replace him, it was complicated, after two years of turbulence. IHU must regain its scientific and international credibility,” analyzed For its part, another member of the board of directors, the president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, Renaud Muselier. “The past is the past, now IHU looks towards the future,” said Michèle Rubirola, first assistant to the town hall of Marseille, in charge of health issues, at the exit of the meeting.
Manager of the PCR test laboratory
Doctor biologist, Professor Fournier had distinguished himself by directing the Large-scale PCR test laboratory that IHU had managed to set up in Marseille as soon as the COVVI-19 epidemic arrived in France. Within the Institute, he is part of the Vitrome team – for “trusses, tropical and Mediterranean infections” -, which monitors infectious diseases. He is also responsible for the sequencing platforms and the IHU biobank.
It was under the direction of Didier Raoult that he had defended his thesis in 1999, devoted to the study of rickettsioses, intracellular bacteria originally, among others, typhus. Given the “links” that Pierre-Edouard Fournier has with Didier Raoult, the hygiene, safety and working conditions committee (CHSCT) of Aix-Marseille University had announced on Tuesday “reprove” this choice. For the Committee, Professor Fournier “does not mean a break in the mode of governance” and does not guarantee “a serene future in terms of scientific and medical probity”.
Didier Raoult accused of “charlatanism”
Chaired by Professor Raoult as of its creation, in 2011, IHU had been shaken for more than two years by incessant controversies. These were particularly crystallized around the hypermedia figure of its director, accused of “charlatanism” by some of his peers for having made the promotion, without scientific validation, of a treatment of the COVID-19 to hydroxychloroquine.
In December, he had received a blame of the order of doctors for having communicated “information that did not rely on any confirmed data”. The accusations of “charlatanism” had however been excluded, as well as those of “unjustified risk” for patients.