The structure specializing in home care is associated with Cèdre de France.
This weekend, a former member of the Hérault will leave Montpellier at the wheel of a utility vehicle marked “Apard” and filled with medical equipment. Destination Paris, where the load will then be sent to Le Havre and then to Beirut. There, he is eagerly awaited in four Lebanese hospitals.
“Their situation is catastrophic. They were already overwhelmed by the economic crisis and the political deadlock that followed the explosion in the port of Beirut has amplified what is becoming a health drama”, summarizes the former elected LR Élie Aboud, who came from Lebanon in his youth to follow his medical studies in Montpellier.
“Extreme precariousness”
Last summer, just a few days after the explosion, Élie Aboud mobilized his peers in medical and political circles to found the Cèdre de France association and finance the care of Lebanese seriously injured but who had lost their insurance like so many of their compatriots.
“With the help of a selection committee from the French medical profession, nineteen people were able to benefit from total care and thus be saved”, he sums up with a smile. Before resuming, a serious tone: “But we couldn’t stop there”.
He talks about it to his friend, Professor Olivier Jonquet, former head of the intensive care unit at the Montpellier University Hospital. Which, among his many functions, has long chaired the Apard association, acronym for Home Respiratory Assistance. The link is made with Pierre Coulot, CEO of the Adène group, which Apard joined in 2018 with two other structures of the same type, Allp and Oïkia. All are at the service of patients requiring heavy care and support at home.
“We also have an endowment fund and the board of directors did not hesitate for a second before responding positively to the request. Especially since it was ultimately quite basic. Of course, we will send Optiflow systems. high flow rate oxygenation, but also basic equipment “. Basic here, but unfortunately it has become a rare commodity in Lebanon where, moreover, the Covid is exploding again. “They have nothing left, adds Élie Aboud. Even gloves, gowns and sterile drapes or compresses or needles. There is a situation of extreme precariousness. I saw people being treated directly in their car, in the parking lot of a hospital “.
“We could only mobilize, relays Professor Jonquet, with Professor Molinari by his side. The links between Lebanon and France are strong and particularly in Montpellier where a number of doctors have come to train, like Jacques Milane who was moreover one of the pioneers of Apard “.
The utility that will leave this weekend, filled with medical equipment, may be just a drop of water in this ocean of needs, but it may be that of the little Hummingbird trying to put out the fire . Moreover, if Pierre Coulaud has accepted to publicize a gesture, it is above all to encourage his colleagues in the medical sector to participate in this chain of solidarity. “We all have unused material in our structures. As far as it is useful.” The call is launched.
Coping with respiratory failure
Apard was born out of the need to cure the polio epidemic in the 1970s. While their chronic respiratory instability confined patients to hospitals until then, the evolution of technology has made it possible to maintain and monitor them. home. Care will then be extended to all patients with respiratory failure in Languedoc-Roussillon.
Special feature of Apard, a non-profit association: patients are members of the board of directors. “This makes it possible to be closer to them, to better feel their need”. And to have a more social approach. With the merger with Allp en Rhône-Alpes, more than 20,000 patients are now followed by some 500 employees.
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