In Marseille, the IHU partners want to accelerate the departure of Didier Raoult – archyde

End of the game at the University Hospital Institute (IHU) for Didier Raoult? The Marseille professor, at the heart of multiple controversies since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, could soon be invited to leave the management of the IHU Méditerranée Infection, which he created and which he has been managing since 2011.

From September, the new director general of the Assistance publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille (AP-HM), François Crémieux, and the president of Aix-Marseille University (AMU), Eric Berton, representing two of the founding members of the IHU, will propose to the board of directors of the foundation which manages the institute and to its president, Yolande Obadia, a very close friend of Didier Raoult, to launch a call for tenders to find a successor to the 69-year-old microbiologist.

“There is a need to turn a page and organize the future of the IHU for the next twenty years. We must move quickly, launch the process in the fall to be successful between the end of the year and the beginning of 2022. We are in the midst of a global pandemic, and we need this institute, which is a formidable tool, and its staff. researchers “, explains François Crémieux, former deputy director of Public Assistance-Hospitals of Paris (AP-HP), appointed head of AP-HM in June.

As of August 31, 2021, caught up in retirement, Didier Raoult will no longer be a university professor-hospital practitioner (PU-PH) within Aix-Marseille University and the University Hospitals of Marseille. If he has sent the management of the AP-HM a request for combining employment and retirement, the Public Assistance does not plan to grant him this adjustment. “The AP-HM medical commission sees no object to extend Didier Raoult, if only for two and a half days a week, as he asks. There are more than enough teams at the IHU for his departure to be fulfilled ”, assures Professor Jean-Luc Jouve, president of the establishment medical commission (CME).

Succession “scheduled for three years”

On the university side, the president, Eric Berton, also confirms that Didier Raoult will be a retiree at the beginning of September, and that he is “The time to prepare your succession in clarity”. “Beyond the personality of its founding director, there has been a continuity of the IHU that Aix-Marseille University wishes to maintain. We will put the process on the table and see how the other founding members position themselves “, continues Mr. Berton.

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