Paris (AFP)

University hospital centers (CHU) in mainland France benefited from € 170.6 million in donations from pharmaceutical laboratories in 2018, according to the survey of a group of regional data journalists who analyzed the Transparency database Health.

In total, more than 1.36 billion euros in donations were recorded in 2018 for all French healthcare professionals, in the public as well as the private sector, listed in this database which makes declarations of any donation of more than ten euros, underlines the Data + Local collective.

But the journalists' investigation of this collective focuses on the 30,000 practitioners distributed in the 32 CHU of the territory: more than 92 million were paid to health professionals working in these establishments, to which are added some 78 million euros paid in particular under agreements made between teaching hospitals and laboratories.

The newspaper Sud Ouest indicates that the CHU de Bordeaux, with nearly 4.5 million euros in benefits and remuneration for its caregivers in 2018, is among the top three "French hospitals whose staff are the most related to the health industry. "

By including all the donations, "we arrive at 9.1 million for this CHU", specifies with AFP Frédéric Sallet, journalist at Sud Ouest, who indicates that the data recovered on the Transparency Health database required "a cleaning". In data not corrected for possible errors, the base gives an amount of 200 million euros in total for UHCs in 2018, he underlines.

For its part, the daily Le Parisien was interested in the AP-HP, which groups 39 hospitals and received over this period 36.5 million euros, including 26.5 million euros for doctors.

- "Clinical research" -

In Ile-de-France, the Swiss laboratory Novartis is the first donor with nearly 2 million paid in 2018, followed by the Americans AbbVie, MSD or by the French Sanofi "for sums which exceed one million euros", according to The Parisian.

Contacted, Sanofi clarified that these sums correspond essentially to research cooperation. "Working relationships between teaching hospitals and drug companies are essential to develop new drugs and test them in clinical trials," the company said in an email.

Le Populaire du Center, for his part, mentions declared links between the laboratories and doctors of the Limoges University Hospital "for a total amount of 1.4 million euros a priori". However, the newspaper said, these links are very varied. He cites the case of an agreement of 60,000 euros linking a professor to laboratories, which in return repay via the agency for the promotion of university research in Limousin sums which make it possible to finance very expensive theses, according to the cited specialist .

The Transparency Health database was set up in 2014 by the government in response to the Mediator scandal. Thirty journalists from the Data + Local collective then cross-checked the data in this database with that of two other databases, that of the Health Directory (which lists the health professionals registered in the national directories) and that of Euros for docs, which simplifies access and decryption of the Transparency Health database.

Fifteen titles participated in this survey: La Montagne, Le Populaire, Le Parisien, L'Alsace, Latest News from Alsace, Le Progrès, Le Bien Public, Le Dauphiné libéré, L'Est Républicain, La Nouvelle République du Center, Ouest France, Paris-Normandie, Sud Ouest, Le Télégramme and La Voix du Nord.

© 2020 AFP