Fragments of FranceA gap of mistrust has widened in Sainte-Pazanne, in Loire-Atlantique, between the population, who warned about the multiplication of the number of sick children, and the authorities, accused of minimizing the phenomenon.
One day in March 2019, on the fifth floor of the Nantes university hospital center, two 7-year-old kids were talking. The first survived a leukemia, he comes out of more than three years of heavy treatments; the second has just been admitted to hospital for the same illness. In a pediatric oncology department, the scene could be trivial, except that the two children know each other well: they attended the same class at a school in Sainte-Pazanne (Loire-Atlantique), not far from Nantes. One sent drawings to the other during his convalescence, the other returns the favor by giving his advice to survive the trials to come. “Seeing two children of this age discussing cancer treatments, it does something”, said Marie Thibaud, the mother of one of them.
In the bocage landscape of the country of Retz, within a radius of a few kilometers around Sainte-Pazanne, 6,800 inhabitants, an abnormally high number of pediatric cancers have been diagnosed over the past six years. Between 2015 and spring 2021, out of a population of around 30,000 people, 25 children and adolescents were affected by different forms of the disease, mainly affecting the blood and the central nervous system. Seven died from it. Old industrial pollution or agricultural pesticides? High-voltage lines or fumes of radon, a radioactive gas very present in the granite soils of the region? No common cause has so far been identified.
Intermittently similar stories appear in the news. Babies who are born without arms in small pockets of territories of Ain, Morbihan or Loire-Atlantique, pediatric cancers too frequent in some municipalities of Charente-Maritime or Jura. It is a law that seems immutable: the awareness of these ultra-local health crises is only due to the mobilization of a few, often carried by the idea that the causes of these childhood diseases are to be found. seek in the environment and that they concern the whole of society.
“People are always struck by their child’s illness, says health sociologist Annie Thébaud-Mony, honorary research director at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm). But to this is also added the fact that they quickly have the feeling of becoming adversaries for the health authorities or the local elected officials, whereas they are aware of bringing questions of general interest. “ As if childhood cancer is too outrageous a disease not to be rude to talk about. Too scandalous not to be able to be anything other than the fruit of an unfortunate coincidence.
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