“At the beginning of February, a doctor from Lenval was indicted for manslaughter and non-assistance to a person in danger,” the public prosecutor Xavier Bonhomme told AFP on February 16. This doctor is accused of having misdiagnosed meningitis.

The judicial investigation was opened against X on August 14, two months after the death of this 17-year-old girl who attended a renowned private establishment in Nice, the Sasserno high school. She left the hospital thinking she was suffering from a banal sunstroke, before collapsing the next day in the arms of her older sister.

To read also: Meningitis: what symptoms?

At the time, the hospital of Lenval had indicated “to have followed the classic procedure of assumption of responsibility”, while the lawyer of the family deplored that the victim was examined only by an intern. This hospital institution records nearly 60,000 emergency room visits per year, making it the third pediatric emergency department in France,

Asked by AFP, the hospital specified that the indicted doctor was no longer part of its staff to date. Ditto for the internal.

A poorly understood disease

The Regional Health Agency announced the death on June 14 and analyzes carried out at the Pasteur laboratory in Paris had confirmed “traces of a meningitis type attack, therefore a disease of which we know the dangerousness and which requires very precise behavior care, which was not done, “said the prosecution at the time.

In recent years, the collective “Together against meningitis” sounded the alarm and asked the health authorities to better inform the public and doctors, recommending to strengthen the initial and continuing training of general practitioners, as well as emergency services. .

What symptoms?

Meningitis generally begins with non-specific symptoms (fever, vomiting, apathy …) which do not easily arouse the vigilance of the family and doctors.

Invasive meningococcal infections are fatal in one in ten cases. Particularly virulent and potentially contagious, they affected 459 people in 2019, causing 55 deaths and 24 cases of early sequelae, according to Public Health France.