Moroccan Girl with Rare Disease Faces Housing Crisis in France During Treatment

2 February 2020 – bySylvanus@Bladi · 2 min read

Hospitalized at the Rouen University Hospital for a rare disease, Imane, 7 years old, and her family could find themselves on the street due to the lack of funding from the Moroccan social security system to pay for accommodation costs. She needs a bone marrow transplant to recover.

"I see that Imane risks ending up on the street, because the Moroccan social security system has not kept its commitment to pay our accommodation costs," laments Mohamed Reyad, the girl’s father, with sadness.

A lawyer in a large Moroccan company, the father left his job in Morocco to come to France with his family to allow his daughter suffering from Fanconi anemia to receive adequate care, reports Franceinfo. With a weakened immune system, the little girl needs a bone marrow transplant to recover. The only major problem: the Moroccan social security system no longer pays the housing assistance that the family had been benefiting from until January 31, 2020. Only Imane’s care is covered by the Moroccan social security system.

In France for 10 months, the family, living in a reception center, risks ending up on the street without this aid or financial assistance, the same source reports. The family is relying on the generosity of good-hearted people to get out of this situation. A solidarity that is struggling to take hold.

"We knock on all the associations, we only find closed doors or then precarious housing of 3/4 days [...]. Their goal is not to stay in France, they want to return to their country once [their daughter] is cured. But the fact of coming full of hope and finding themselves in a worse situation than [the one] they left, it saddens me," laments Dounia Oulqaid, a woman who expresses her closeness to Imane’s family.

Category: France

Keywords:

France Health Rouen Child