Cadmium screening tests, which the French are highly contaminated with by eating cereals or bread due to the use of phosphate fertilizers in agriculture, will be reimbursed "in the fall in general practice," the Minister of Health announced on Tuesday.
On June 5, the Regional Unions of Healthcare Professionals - Liberal Doctors (URPS) denounced "an explosion in the contamination of young children" in France with this toxic metal, "omnipresent in our environment" due to the spreading of phosphate fertilizers, which accumulates in the body and exposes to an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases and cancer in particular.
These professionals have "raised the interest in screening" for this substance targeting at-risk patients, recalled Yannick Neuder, questioned in the National Assembly by Green MP Sandrine Rousseau.
"This screening is reimbursed in hospitals and will be reimbursed in the fall in general practice," he said.
According to the ministry, "work on the reimbursement of cadmium screening tests for people at risk, and the framework for this reimbursement, is underway with the objective of having defined" this scope by the end of 2025.
As for the recommendation issued in 2021 by the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Health Safety (ANSES) not to exceed 20 mg of cadmium per kg of phosphate fertilizers, Mr. Neuder stated that he will be "particularly vigilant regarding the order that the Ministry of Agriculture must issue on this subject, as other countries, such as Finland, Poland and Romania, have done."
Furthermore, the bill to establish a national cancer registry to improve monitoring of this disease, adopted in April 2023 by the Senate, was placed on the agenda of the National Assembly on June 23, noted Mr. Neuder.
The existing departmental registers only cover 21 to 24% of the French population.
On June 3, Aurélien Rousseau, former Minister of Health who became a Member of Parliament, asked Mr. Neuder to "complete the registry project" and revealed that he himself had cancer, calling on the government not to cut research budgets for this disease and to support prevention.
Assembly President Yaël Braun-Pivet, who revealed in January that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago, had urged the executive to take up the text "on the government's agenda" in order to "move quickly."
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