Marseilles (AFP)

The new director general of public hospitals in Marseille (AP-HM) is there "to clean up", accused Didier Raoult, director of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, on Monday, retired at the end of August and that the AP-HM does not want to extend.

"He arrives to clean and I am one of the objects he would like to clean", insisted Professor Raoult, in an interview with CNews from the IHU: "He is Hirsch's great friend, and like j 'Said what I thought of the management of Paris, which was absolutely appalling, he is very angry with me ".

Former deputy of Martin Hirsch, the general manager of the AP-HP, the Parisian public hospitals, François Crémieux took up the post of general manager of the AP-HM in July and told Le Monde that he wanted to launch the recruitment process. of a successor to Professor Raoult.

As of August 31, Mr. Raoult, promoter of a controversial treatment of Covid-19 patients via a dual therapy combining hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, will be officially retired as a university professor-hospital practitioner.

"I could have been recruited as a contractual hospital practitioner for another two years, it would bring in more than two million euros per year to the Public Assistance, because of my scientific activity which generates money", pleads Mr. Raoult, stressing that the decision on his extension request will be taken by the board of directors of the Foundation which oversees the IHU.

In this council, "the representative of Public Assistance (Editor's note: Mr. Crémieux for the AP-HM) has only one vote" out of 18, underlined Mr. Raoult, specifying that "a meeting ( was) scheduled for mid-September with the six founding members of the IHU ", including the AP-HM, before a board meeting.

Asked about the vaccine strategy, Mr. Raoult explained that he was in favor of "encircling vaccinations": "We should focus on populations at risk, those over 65 and people with pathologies (...), generalization vaccination in children does not seem to me to be an absolute emergency ".

Globally favorable "to conviction more than to brutal obligation", Mr. Raoult also specified to be "more for vaccines with inactivated virus, possibly reinforced by adjuvants, than for RNA vaccines" messenger.

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