2024-01-24 18:00:07
Charcot disease or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a rare disease of the motor neuron. At least five people died in a street in the village of Saint-Vaast-en-Chaussée in the Somme. The mayor says he is worried while Public Health France has launched an investigation to find out if there is a common cause.
At least five people with Charcot disease died in the village of Saint-Vaast-en-Chaussée, located in the Somme, north of Amiens, between 2009 and 2023.
What do they have in common? They live in the same neighborhood, and more precisely two streets next to each other.
“We are at 6 deaths now“, specifies Marc Vignolle, mayor of the village. Initially, the count stopped at 5, but: “I learned a week ago, following the publication of the Courrier Picard article, that there was a first case of Charcot, the oldest“, in the same street, adds the city councilor.
At the time, they thought it was a death due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. “But apparently, no, he died from Charcot. So I’m checking this“, to his beneficiaries, in order to have confirmation. The first person died in 2009, “the first one was maybe 2000, but I’m not sure yet. The last death was in 2023.”
The councilor contacted the Hauts-de-France regional health agency (ARS) in 2020. According to him, the only response he received was: “there is nothing serious, you are in the national statistics, there are no more deaths than elsewhere.”
I kept telling them that what was complicated was that it was on the same street. Is something happening on this street? Shouldn’t we do water and field analyses, analyzes of I don’t know what?
Marc Vignolle, mayor of St-Vaast-en-Chaussée
A priori, the cause of the polluted watercourse cannot be put forward because there is none in the village. “There is a water table since we had a catchment and our water tower which distributed water to the village“, continues the mayor. But it has been closed for a dozen years and the cases continued followingwards. “Water has not come from St-Vaast at all for 12 years“, he explains.
Marc Vignolle notes that the deceased people did not belong to the same family and were not “no identical socio-professional category“. The profiles are different: “there were people who had lived there for a while and others who came to settle later“Among the victims, there are no farmers,”therefore no direct exposure to phytosanitary products“.
As for the atmosphere of the village, “it’s okay, apart from the new residents because we have 40 subdivision houses which will be built between 2020 and 2023“in a street which adjoins the one concerned by the worrying number of patients.”Some administrators ask questions: is there a risk? etc. Other than telling them I don’t know, I’m helpless regarding all that.“
Contacted, the ARS indicates that its teams “studied this report with the greatest attention in order to accurately identify from hospital services and/or treating doctors the number of known patients. 5 cases of residents, living in the same street or in a perpendicular street for one of them, having contracted the disease between 2007 and 2022 have thus been confirmed“. She adds that she “is not aware of other cases reported in the municipality.“
As a result, Santé Publique France (SPF) informs us that it has been contacted by the ARS Hauts-de-France to obtain answers in order to know “if the suspicion of excess incidence / spatiotemporal aggregate is objective for the pathology mentioned” et “look, if necessary, for the existence of a risk factor common to the cases.“
At the moment, investigations are ongoing. “Their first objective is to carefully document the cases. Case documentation is an essential first step in cluster investigation“, brightens SPF.
The organization has also “established an investigation process in several stages“. Relying on “international literature and guides“, they have “produces a methodological guide for investigating spatiotemporal groupings of non-infectious disease cases (cluster)“. This investigation protocol provides “the collection of information on reported health problems in the environment in which they occurred.“
Public Health France suggests that “the guiding scientific principle for investigating a cluster report lies in the notion that, if there is an ‘abnormal’ grouping of people suffering from the same disease, they might share exposure to one or more common causes and that this exposure situation is not found in the rest of the population.“
Therefore, the objective is to determine whether there actually exists “a statistical excess of diseases in the observed population“. If this exists, then it is necessary to determine “one or more local causes for this grouping of cases, other than chance, on which it is possible to act“, concludes the organization.
With Jennifer Alberts/FTV
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