The time when it was “working at full speed” is now over. For four years, the Desgenettes military hospital in Lyon has been dying. It goes out slowly to the chagrin of its helpless staff. The closures of intensive care and emergencies seem to have precipitated the fall of this historic establishment. The figures are there: 820 practitioners (military and civilian combined) in 2018, 420 today. A hundred planned for the end of 2023.
Desgenettes will not close strictly speaking. But in the next two years, its activities will be reduced to a trickle. No more care will be delivered to the traditional population, which currently represents 80% of the patient population. “A loss of chance for them when you know the quality of the care provided and the human support”, estimates Pascal Lecapitaine, secretary general of the CGT.
“The Cold Shower”
The hospital will become a “military hospital branch”. It will only retain the rehabilitation of wounded soldiers and the management of their post-traumatic stress. The number of beds will drop from 320 beds to around ten. Too few in view of the 30,000 soldiers identified in the area, believes the unions. The rest will be attached to the Toulon military hospital. So decided the Ministry of the Armed Forces.
The announcement, made in this sense in October, was experienced as “a cold shower” by the staff. Already the problem of the reclassification of doctors is looming. “Twenty may have a project. In the basin, there are hardly any possibilities. There is only one military hospital in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and it is Desgnettes”, underlines Pascal Lecapitaine. And to add: “Civilian hospices generally do not attract military care professionals who do not see themselves doing anything else”.
“Financial Logic”
In a letter addressed to Emmanuel Macron, Laurent Attar-Bayrou, president of FNAME-OPEX (national federation of former foreign missions and operations), denounces a “revolting decision” and deplores “a financial logic”. The region has 8 million inhabitants, including 1.5 million in the Lyon agglomeration alone, he recalls. And to insist: “More than 30,000 soldiers in the area will be deprived of access to care in the military environment”.
“We know that in times of post-traumatic stress, soldiers need to be in a bubble to get better. They need to be cared for in an environment that understands them, develops the person concerned with 20 minutes. The Ministry wanted to regroup its establishments, has closed. The impact is tangible. It is to have created a military hospital desert in the center of France. »
According to Laurent Attar-Bayrou, the soldiers risk being confronted with a dilemma: “to go to the south of France or to Paris to be treated” or to give up military hospitals. “Only, civilian hospital structures are not suitable. Consequently, this brings us back to the private sector, ”he laments.
But the soldiers are not the only ones to pay the broken pots. The “dissolution” of the Desgenettes hospital will have greater consequences, going beyond the borders of Lyon, warns Laurent Attar-Bayrou. “France will also deprive itself of operational capacity in the event of a major crisis, as we have just experienced (coronavirus epidemic and transfer of patients). We know that the military have the advantage of being operational 24 hours a day and of being mobilized within an hour. They can come quickly to reinforce the police and firefighters on the ground. There, it will no longer be possible…”