ABSTRACT
While COVID-19 continues to progress worldwide, the French situation is particularly affected by a lack of masks, tests and, as everywhere else, by the lack of clinically validated therapeutic options. The French government has made the choice of confinement and remote monitoring of patients, with recourse to the healthcare system only when signs of worsening appear (hospitalisation). But in Marseille, a hospital research centre (IHU, led by Pr. Raoult) decided to apply the doctrine of ‘test and treat’ using hydroxychloroquine. This chapter explores the effects of this decision on local doctors’ practices relative to COVID-19. We will show the dilemmas faced by doctors: how they navigate the controversy over hydroxychloroquine as well as negotiate with their patients’ demand for testing and treatment with hydroxychloroquine. This chapter constitutes a first attempt at bringing together the results of a wider research project involving analysis several surveys and interviews conducted among GPs in Marseille and 1200 GPs in France, an analysis of the coverage of the hydroxychloroquine debate in the French national press and surveys conducted among representative samples of the French population. It will also draw on one of the authors’ experience of being a general practitioner in Marseille.
