Anxiety, loss of chances, excess mortality … Patients outside covid do not want to be the “collateral victims“Care deprogramming is now alerting patient associations.

In a column published in The world this April 6, 27 associations of patients at risk of severe form of covid are alarmed: “We suffer all the delays, deprogramming, cancellations, loss of opportunity, deterioration of our physical and mental health. “

80% deprogramming

Because in the face of the new outbreak of covid, the deprogramming is massive. They should reach 80% in hospitals in Ile-de-France, has already warned the Minister of Health Olivier Véran. A necessary decision to free up intensive care beds and hospital staff to support the influx of covid patients.

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More impact in chronically ill patients

But these deprogramming “Cascade“, as the Hospital Federation of France qualifies them, cannot”last for several weeks without major consequences on public health“.

And “in chronically ill patients, deprogramming has much more impact“than in other patients, deplores Dr. Jean-Pierre Thierry, medical adviser of France Assos Santé. An impact on physical but also psychological health:”With the deprograms, people felt abandoned. When you are a chronic patient followed regularly, it is very anxiety-provoking“he sums up.

A thousand kidney transplants have not taken place

One of the sectors most affected by deprogramming is cancerology. For Professor Axel Kahn, president of the League against cancer, 100,000 delays in diagnosing cancer have been recorded since the start of the health crisis with the consequence of an excess mortality of 13,500 people. “Behind these figures, there are pains, distresses. It’s intolerable. “

But cancer is not the only disease affected. According to figures from the Biomedicine Agency, in the first 10.5 months of 2020, kidney transplants have fallen by 29% compared to 2019. And more than a thousand kidney transplants have not taken place in 2020.

Strong measures to curb the epidemic

“We do not accept that our lives are deliberately sacrificed“insist today the 27 associations signing the platform. Faced with health restrictions that do”do not allow and are not intended to protect (them)“, these chronically ill demand that”measures which have already proved their worth and which are the only ones capable of rapidly curbing the epidemic are taken without delay“.

“The return to a low level of circulation of the virus should allow a resumption of control, the establishment of effective “test-trace-isolate” devices, and the continuation of a rapid and ambitious vaccination campaign.“concludes the forum.