“It's urgent!”: while he had disappeared, doctors warn of the return of scurvy, a disease linked to malnutrition and famine

Sa réapparition inquiète les spécialistes. MAXPPP – Sebastien TOUBON

Alors qu’on pensait la maladie disparue, le scorbut a fait son retour en France. Une maladie, liée à des carences en vitamine C, souvent associée à la malnutrition et la famine et dont le nombre de cas qui a notamment augmenté chez les enfants.

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“It is estimated that scurvy caused 2 million deaths between the 16th and 20th centuries, especially among sailors,” Ulrich Meinzer, coordinator of the study on the increase in cases of scurvy among children, explained to BFMTV. This study revealed that between January 2015 and November 2023, 888 children were hospitalized with scurvy in France. Scurvy is a disease that mainly affected sailors who went to sea for months and who mainly ate curdled milk. By the way, the word scurvy comes from the Viking “skyrbjurg”.

“It's really confusing”

The symptoms of scurvy are bleeding gums, fatigue, hair or tooth loss, hemorrhages or joint pain. Its appearance is due to vitamin C deficiencies.

“Such deficiencies in our time are really disconcerting,” says Ulrich Meinzer, before adding that we “should not encounter this disease in children living in France”.

“There is currently in France a population of children aged 5 to 10 who are exposed to a profound nutritional deficiency. I think it is a public health problem that requires an urgent response,” he adds to FranceInfo. The human body must have 110 mg of vitamin C per day and below 10 mg symptoms can appear.

Unbalanced diet and inflation

While the disease is potentially fatal and claimed many victims during the Middle Ages, it can be cured by taking vitamin C as a medicine for about ten consecutive days. Faced with this situation, doctors interviewed by Libération, are calling for a program to educate young people about a balanced diet.

But its simple reappearance in France, particularly among children, raises questions, particularly about access to balanced food in the face of inflation and rising prices. For Ulrich Meinzer, “In our profession, we meet parents who tell us that they limit their food intake due to lack of means. It's urgent!”