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Immunocompromised people are more vulnerable to Covid-19, more at risk of developing a severe form of the disease. Since March 18, the Haute Autorité de Santé has authorized immunocompromised people from the age of 12 to take the preventive treatment Evusheld®. Nevertheless, too few patients have access to it, for lack of prescription.
A measure welcomed by the Renaloo association
The drug Evusheld® is a preventive treatment against severe forms of Covid-19. The High Authority for Health (HAS) has just given its authorization for early access to patients undergoing chemotherapy as well as to immunocompromised people from the age of 12 and weighing more than 40 kg. As Renaloo Advocacy Manager Magali Leo points out, this expansion will “also concern dialysis patients”.
For the patient association, it is a “as we welcome”. Indeed, a greater number of patients can now have access to this preventive treatment, with caution for patients at “high cardiovascular risk” and no longer for patients with at least two pre-existing cardiovascular risk factors.
Too few immunocompromised people received treatment
This measure was expected from the Association, but also from immunocompromised patients, because “the proportion of people who received the treatment is still too low”. Since it was licensed, about 17,000 patients out of about 100,000 eligible people have received the treatment. “Results that outrage us given the risks to which immunocompromised patients who are not protected by vaccination are exposed” laments Magali Leo. The association can therefore only hope that more people have access to it.
Furthermore, there are significant regional disparities in terms of Evusheld® prescriptions. Some professionals prescribe the drug very little, especially in “Brittany and Hauts-de-France”, as Madame Leo points out.
She and her colleagues are therefore asking “lots of practice questions” concerning access to this treatment, but also on the transmission of information concerning the eligibility criteria. “The majority of immunocompromised people do not have access to this treatment and are not even aware of its existence.”. According to her, it is in “total contradiction with the patient’s right to health”.
According to her, “France was however in advance, this treatment was eagerly awaited by the community of immunocompromised people”. Indeed, they “pay a heavy price“since the beginning of the health crisis and had placed “a lot of hope in the arrival of this treatment, promising a return to normal life”.
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According to Magali Leo, strong messages must be sent to the medical community. “Treatments must be accessible everywhere and it would be useful for the Minister to forcefully remind all hospital teams”.
This underutilization is a “nonsense”: “we are talking about a small community of patients who could easily have been treated in a few days with a little goodwill […] but some teams continue to oppose it”. However, in order to facilitate the delivery of the treatment, its administration at the patient’s home was made possible thanks, in particular, to the mobilization of the patient associations concerned.
“The virus is still actively circulating and immunocompromised people are forced to continue to self-isolate while we have the means to protect them”, denounces Mrs. Leo.
She stresses that the lifting of health restrictions must be accompanied by the urgent protection of immunocompromised people from the risks of Covid-19, “by increasing the use of preventive treatments and by raising awareness among the general population of the benefits of wearing a mask indoors, in solidarity with the most vulnerable people.”