On Friday, the doors of the health center located on avenue des Arnavaux, in the 14th arrondissement of Marseille, will close for the last time. One of the two general practitioners who officiate there is retiring. And her colleague decided to move a little further away, in Sainte-Marthe, not being able to support the expenses of the center, its two secretaries and its three cabinets alone.
Each doctor in this medical practice usually receives around sixty patients per day and covers an area where several thousand inhabitants live, spread over three cities in the northern districts: Jean-Jaurès, Massalia and Campagne-Larousse. On Friday, around 100 people demonstrated outside to publicly challenge the authorities. “How are we going to do it?” “Asks Daouiya Hassani, mother of three children, one of the residents behind the mobilization. “Already, where we live [à Jean-Jaurès], there is nothing, she regrets. There were only two things: the medical center and the pharmacy, and it too will close without doctors. We are young, that’s fine, but the elderly, how are they going to do? What about children with a 40 ° C fever in the evening? Shall we go to the emergency room? “
“Today it’s Jean-Jaurès, yesterday the Merlan, tomorrow the Busserine”
Before this event, two meetings were held with the inhabitants, representatives of the regional health agency, the metropolis and the prefect of the Marseille plan, Laurent Carrié, and Yazid Attallah, doctor and president of the association Sept (Santé and environment for all). Without, however, making it possible to move forward immediately.
The problem of medical desertification in poor neighborhoods in the north of the city is not new, and the phenomenon continues to worsen. “Today it’s Jean-Jaurès, yesterday the Merlan, tomorrow the Busserine; there is always a subject, sighs Yazid Attallah. I’ve been looking for a doctor for La Castellane for a year and a half, and we haven’t found one. A doctor will not come alone. He will wonder if there is a physiotherapist, a nursing office … We also need a structure that carries a health project and can solve the related problems, CMU, Vitale card. »And to take some successes as examples, such as the districts of Malpassé (13th) or Consolat (15th).
A need for “significant funding”
The ideal would be to be able to pay doctors in associations that would carry the project, as Yazid Attallah is in the process of doing at Carrefour Merlan (14th), where he will create a multidisciplinary house. “But that requires significant funding”, supports the doctor.
There is also a question of the attractiveness of these territories, because practitioners are free to choose where they settle. In particular, drug sales networks can create fear. “I do not understand: security for the doctors, it is there, even if things happen and it is true that there have been murders, sums up a resident. But, inside the center, we don’t risk anything. “