It’s a bit of a homecoming. Ten years following leaving the National Institute for Health Surveillance (INVS), Caroline Semaille, currently Deputy Director General of the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines (ANSM), is preparing to take the lead. The decree was published in Official newspaper from Thursday 23 February.
In the meantime, the establishment attached to the Ministry of Health, has changed its name and has been called Public Health France (SPF) since 2016. The post of the most important public health structure – with the general directorate of health – had been vacant since November 2022, the previous director, Geneviève Chêne, not having been renewed at the end of her three-year term.
The agency was particularly criticized at the start of the Covid-19 crisis for its unpreparedness or the weakness of its information systems allowing the monitoring of the health status of populations. In a December 2022 report, the Court of Auditors had issued several criticisms: obsolescence and risk of failure of information systems, need to clarify the missions of the agency… Caroline Semaille therefore arrives at a pivotal moment.
Of all epidemics
For this 57-year-old public health doctor and infectious disease specialist, this appointment is part of the logic of a twenty-year professional career in health agencies, from INVS from 2002 to 2013, to ANSM from 2013. in 2019 and since 2021, via the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (Anses), in the meantime.
One of his assets for this future position is to have followed all the epidemics: HIV-AIDS in the 1990s, SARS in 2003, H1N1 flu in 2008, MERS-CoV in 2013, Ebola in 2014… “She went through all the crises that we also experienced and she kept the memory of them. For us on the ground, his appointment is excellent news. She is from the seraglio and is not parachuted, says Gilles Pialoux, head of infectious diseases at the Tenon hospital (Public Assistance-Paris Hospitals, AP-HP).
Very early on, medicine imposed itself on her. “It’s my spine. The first time I had to think regarding being a doctor, I was 10 years old. And no one around me has ever doubted that I will be. » She does not come from a dynasty family, only her grandfather, an ophthalmologist in the navy, was. Very early too, she chose public health, because “beyond the individual, it is taking care of a population”. “She was attracted by what she called cross-disciplinary specialties and was already very committed to what she was doing,” remembers Gérard Helft, cardiologist at Pitié-Salpêtrière (AP-HP), who knew her as a young external when he was internal.
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