The subject was invited into the discussions around the health vigilance bill, examined in the Senate yesterday. While the debates should mainly focus on the possibility of extending the health pass until the summer, Senator LR Sylviane Noël reported an alert from the Inter-Hospitals Collective on the situation of pediatric services.
For the Collective, the situation is “catastrophic” in the hospital, “children in a vital emergency can no longer be treated because of the lack of staff”. “In this month of October, we were unable to welcome five children in a vital emergency situation”, specifies Oanez Ackermann, from the pediatric hepatology department of the Bicêtre University Hospital Center (AP-HP) including 10 beds out of 24. are now closed.
“It’s sorting,” said Véronique Hentgen, pediatrician at the Center hospitalier de Versailles, referring to the postponement of surgery for a lymph node infection, the non-hospitalization of a child requiring an electroencephalogram for 24 hours, of a another suffering from joint pain or the inability to install insulin pumps “because there is no more room for hospitalization”.
An overall finding refuted by the Minister for Autonomy, Brigitte Bourguignon. “On pediatrics, for sure, there are tensions”, she agrees, “but there is no sorting, especially in emergencies”. “It is out of the question not to take a child in a vital emergency”, insists the member of the government.