They feel that the state has given up on people suffering from asbestos cancer. The abandonment of a mesothelioma surveillance system, announced at the end of December 2023, just before Christmas, continues to spark anger among organizations supporting patients and their families. In a more measured tone, several doctors working on the issue express deep concerns about the arbitration, which they say could be harmful to both patients and scientific knowledge.
The warning was issued on January 24 through a press release from the National Association for the Defense of Asbestos Victims (Andeva). “Everything happens as if we decided to break the thermometer to treat the fever! », she denounces. His outrage was triggered by an email sent a month earlier by the Public Health France agency to around thirty experts. In this correspondence, revealed by our colleagues Health & work and to which one The world Had access, the public institution writes that it “is no longer able to use the national mesothelioma surveillance system”Who should ” take over “ a program that fulfills the same function in around twenty departments. “This decision is extremely difficult for the agency [n’a plus les] sufficient resources”justifies Public Health France.
The massive use of asbestos in the 20th centurye Century, was accompanied by a significant increase in pleural cancers (or pleural mesotheliomas). In France it is “estimated annual number of cases” According to an article in , the number increased from 800 to just over 1,110 between 1998 and 2002 and between 2013 and 2016 Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin published at the end of April 2020. In men, the disease is essentially due to exposure to asbestos in connection with their professional activity. These are often workers who, for example in the construction industry, carry out interventions with products that contain the contaminated material.
“Check our procedures in restricted mode”
Since 1998, pleural mesothelioma has been the subject of a very sophisticated surveillance program that pursues several objectives: assessment and monitoring of the incidence of the pathology, observation of patient survival, determination of the professions and sectors most at risk, etc. Once a case is identified, a thorough investigation is carried out. The system relies in particular on Netmeso, a network of doctors from large healthcare institutions who specialize in rare pleural tumors. The role of these experts is crucial: among other things, they make diagnoses to confirm that a person actually has pleural mesothelioma.
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