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We don’t talk about it much, but people with comorbidities, who are in fact more at risk in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, are bearing the brunt of this particular health situation. With a greater risk of isolation and stigmatization.
“It’s been two years since I left the ball in the stomach and it’s starting to weigh“. With humor but not without gravity, Catherine Fabre recounts her life under glass for almost two years.
This 55-year-old resident of Lançon-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) was operated on in 2011 for a sleeve (technique consisting of removing part of the stomach). But despite the surgery, “(she) remains obese“.
In February 2020, she is with her husband in Italy, as the pandemic begins to sweep across Europe. They celebrate their wedding anniversary at the Venice Carnival. “It was a Sunday. Everything stopped suddenly, we came home in disaster“.
Life since has been like endless confinement for this tax official, working from home. “We have a lot of stress, a feeling of isolation. We no longer have a social life“.
Double victim
Member of the board of directors of the League against obesity, Catherine Fabre founded in 2013 the association History of weight, which accompanies obese people, through sport or nutrition advice. Again, “contact was lost with some members, many gave up.”
Psychologist in Nancy, specializing in eating disorders, Alexandra Tubiana explains that “obese people were very scared; we reached overwhelmed stresses, which aggravated eating problems”. Also added was “the worry of dying”.
On its website, the Ministry of Health recalls that “the link has been proven between obesity and the risk of Covid-19 complications, due to the associated pathologies but also independently of them“.
Overweight at risk
“Yesterday, in my service, a man born in 1981 died of Covid after several days of resuscitation. His only history was being overweight“, testifies Dr Alexandre Cortes, head of the visceral and digestive surgery department of the Grand Hôpital de l’Est Francilien (GHEF, Seine-et-Marne).
“If you look at who died from Covid, we focused a lot on the elderly but, overall, the people who occupied the sheaves were obese patients“, assures this specialist.
According to the Department of Health, “the data from the successive studies have confirmed the results collected in April 2020 by the Lille CHRU teams: more than 47% of infected patients entering intensive care are obese“.
This finding is supported by a recent study conducted in England and published in June 2021 in the journal The Lancet on “the links between body mass index (BMI) and severe forms of Covid-19” (“Associations between body-mass index and COVID-19 severity”
One in two overweight or obese people
“The aggravation of the health risk is not only physical (respiratory, resuscitation) but also mental and societal“, insists for her part Alexandra Tubiana, who fears that “the stigma, associated with the guilt of being too fat, contributes to the ambient fatphobia“.
According to the Obépi-Roche national epidemiological survey, published in June 2020, one in two people is overweight or obese in France, recalls Anne-Sophie Joly, president of the National Collective of Obese Associations (CNAO). She is alarmed by the delay in monitoring obesity, a pathology which she would like France to make a great national cause: “The obese are the first to be deprogrammed (for their bariatric surgery operations). If we add the patient’s fear of going out to consult, it’s a huge time bomb“.
Catherine Fabre had to be operated on again on December 8th. “The morning I was to enter the hospital, I was called to inform me that the intervention was postponed. I understand it but at the time, it was very hard to live“.
Consult a GP online
keep track
For operated patients, it is very important to maintain post-operative follow-up, through teleconsultations. This is what Dr Nicolas Veyrie, specialist in bariatric surgery, whom we interviewed in the context of an article on this particular surgery and its consequences, recommends: “these patients must not under any circumstances suspend their follow-up by a multidisciplinary team and carry out the scheduled post-operative appointments by teleconsultation he insists. “In particular consultations with dieticians and psychologists, all the more so in this difficult period. “.