The situation is critical, and it becomes routine. This is what Marc Noizet, president of the Samu-Urgences de France union, denounces. This Wednesday, the union leader said that emergency services are “currently saturated, like every winter”.
“The Strasbourg University Hospital was forced to deploy a health unit in front of its emergency rooms to avoid congestion and queues from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. for ambulances in front of its department,” he said on the microphone of France Interwhile the white plan was activated in Alsace in mid-December, allowing hospital directors to cancel non-urgent operations or reorganize staff schedules.
A “conjunction of several epidemics” to manage
“In Finistère, three emergency services went on strike at the beginning of December”, “in Bordeaux, we no longer have the capacity to answer at center 15” and “in Var, it is a emergency service. “out of two emergencies which now close at night”, further described the head of the Mulhouse emergency department. “This year, once again, we have the problem of the conjunction of several epidemics”, with in particular “the flu on the rise in the eastern part of France” and “a resurgence of Covid”, he explained .
“Every day in emergency departments, there are lines of patients waiting for a hospital bed to become available,” he added. This situation is also explained by cases which would fall under city medicine, also in “crisis”, underlined for his part Frédéric ValletouxHorizons deputy for Seine-et-Marne, also on France Inter.
Faced with tensions in terms of recruitment at the public hospital, the fixed allowance for work on Sundays and public holidays and night work for some hospital staff will be increased on January 1, in accordance with the government’s commitments.