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Since last November, children attending primary school in a small town in Haute-Savoie have been victims of strange symptoms. No explanation having been found, the Regional Health Agency has opened an investigation. Update with Dr Gérald Kierzek, emergency doctor and medical director of Doctissimo.
It is a mysterious illness that affects several children in the town of Boëge, in Haute-Savoie. The children present common symptoms, without their origin being explained for the moment.
Itching, difficulty breathing, headaches…
According to the information reported by our colleagues from Dauphine Liberethe children would suffer from itching, headaches or breathing difficulties, without any cause for these symptoms being able to be put forward.
It started in November 2022, in the public primary school of Boëge, in a CM2 class, after a fencing session. In the following weeks, the disease spread to students in neighboring schools. Some children see their symptoms regress once they are out of school.
Faced with this situation, the mayor of this village of 1,700 souls took matters into his own hands. A call has been made toan independent body for air quality checks“. The town also seized the National Education, school medicine and the Regional Health Agency (ARS), which announced the opening of an investigation, to try to understand what is happening to these children.
The opinion of Dr Gérald Kierzek, emergency doctor and medical director of Doctissimo
“As an emergency physician, when we are faced with a group of people with similar symptoms, the two avenues to rule out in the first place are collective food poisoning (TIAC) and carbon monoxide poisoning. These two avenues seem ruled out in the case of these children. We do not know what affects them, the investigations carried out may give something. Otherwise, we must explore the track of collective psychosis, which is a psychological and social phenomenon, which occurs when a group of people develops the same symptoms, without explanation. This requires psychiatric treatment“.