They have the impression that the State has given up on individuals suffering from asbestos cancer. Announced at the end of December 2023, just before Christmas, the abandonment of a mesothelioma monitoring system continues to arouse anger among organizations that support patients and their loved ones. In a more measured tone, several doctors working on this issue express their deep concern about arbitration which, according to them, risks proving detrimental for patients as well as for scientific knowledge.
The alert was given on January 24 by a press release from the National Association for the Defense of Asbestos Victims (Andeva). “Everything happens as if we had decided to break the thermometer to treat the fever! », she denounces. At the origin of his indignation, there was an email sent a month earlier to around thirty experts by the Public Health France agency. In this correspondence, revealed by our colleagues from Health & work and to which The world had access, the public establishment writes that it “is no longer able to deploy the national mesothelioma surveillance system”who should ” take over “ of a program fulfilling the same function in around twenty departments. “This decision is extremely difficult but the agency [n’a plus les] sufficient resources »justifies Public Health France.
The massive use of asbestos during the 20th centurye century, was accompanied by a significant increase in cancers of the pleura (or pleural mesothelioma). In France, the “estimated annual number of cases” increased from 800 to just over 1,110 between the periods 1998-2002 and 2013-2016, according to an article in Weekly epidemiological bulletin published at the end of April 2020. In men, the disease results, essentially, from exposure to asbestos linked to their professional activity. These are often workers carrying out interventions, for example in construction, with products which contain the incriminated material.
“Review our procedures in degraded mode”
Since 1998, pleural mesothelioma has been the subject of a very sophisticated surveillance program, which pursues several objectives: evaluate and monitor the incidence of the pathology, observe patient survival, determine the professions and sectors most at risk, etc. As soon as a case is identified, a thorough investigation is carried out. The system relies in particular on Netmeso, a network of doctors attached to large health establishments who specialize in rare tumors of the pleura. The role of these experts is crucial: they provide – among other things – diagnoses to certify that an individual is indeed suffering from pleural mesothelioma.
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