MOBILIZATION OF LIVER TRANSPLANT PATIENTS

           A call to support Professor Olivier Boillot

Dear Sir, dear Madam,

Through this petition, I would like to draw your attention and inform you that the Professor Olivier Boillot, Chief of the liver transplant unit HCH (hospital in Lyons, France) will no longer perform liver transplants for adults or children from September 13, 2010.

The “hospices civils de Lyon” (hospital services in Lyons) have decided to create only one center of liver transplant located at “Hopital de la Croix Rousse”. As a result, Professor Boillot’s unit is about to be closed.

He has been offered to perform transplants somewhere else, in “Groupement Nord”, an offer which is unacceptable in itself: he will no longer have a situation with responsibilities and will be unable to cure his patients.

To date he has performed nearly 1060 liver transplants and was the first in France to perform a liver transplant with a live donor in 1992.

On June 22, 2010, my son Axel, who is 20 months old, has benefited from a transplant from a live donor (myself) and I have been enabled to appreciate Professor Olivier Boillot’s professionalism and humanity.

How can a city like Lyons consider losing a practitioner with such a renown when two very modern hospitals are about to be in office? (“HFME” and “Groupement Nord”).

It is about fining a post with responsibilities for a Professor who is unanimously known for his abilities, his practice and his entire commitment to his patients.

Due to my actions within the association “AVB l’espoir renaît” (French for Biliary Atresia the hope is reborn), I am in touch with numerous desperate parents who are really worried about their children’s health.

Due to his experience and expertise, Professor Olivier Boillot prefers to perform an intervention which he knows is inescapable, rather than to wait until the children are between life and death to transplant them.

Since Lyons is one of the only transplant centers with live donors in France, where will future liver transplant patients go?

From September 13, liver transplants in pediatrics will be performed by a surgeon coming occasionally from the hospital Necker in Paris while the Professor Boillot will stay in Lyons, unemployed.

This situation is unacceptable, which is why I am asking you to sign this petition, to add a supportive comment if you would like and to pass it on to as many transplant patients or future transplant patients as possible.

 This petition will be forwarded to Mister Gérard Collomb, President to the supervising Council of the hospitals of Lyons, to Mister Paul Castel, President of the board of Directors of the Hospitals of Lyons, to Mister Morin, Director of “ARS” and to Mister Jacques Gérault, prefect of “Rhône-Alpes”

I thank you and count on your support, we have to get mobilized!

Benoîte Curt, parent of a liver transplant patient.

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