“We plan to evacuate to the metropolis in the coming days”, declared on franceinfo Stéphane Berniac, deputy director general of the CHU of Fort-de-France, in Martinique, while the island also sees the 5th wave of Covid-19 rising. “Hospital pressure has been increasing for ten days”, notes Stéphane Berniac with Covid services which are filling up.
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The tense social context in Martinique worsens the situation. “We are facing a double health and social crisis”, explains the deputy director general of the CHU of Fort-de-France. Additional reinforcements were requested in the face of “attractiveness deficit” of the establishment, while many caregivers in metropolitan France are already on site.
franceinfo: After a week of social conflicts and roadblocks, the Fort-de-France University Hospital Center is on the verge of implosion. What’s going on ?
Stéphane Berniac: For the past ten days, we have been facing a double health and social crisis. A social crisis which led to roadblocks and which prevented many medical and non-medical personnel from accessing their workplace. They suffered threats and violence sometimes on these roadblocks, and we found ourselves obliged to trigger the minimum service, to deprogram all surgical activities, consultations and to do only life-threatening emergencies for ten days. .
“Today, the situation is improving a little, we have been able to lift this minimum service, but at the same time, we have had an upsurge in Covid for ten days, with a net flow in the last 48 hours of almost 10 patients per day that arrive in the establishment. “
Stéphane Berniac, University Hospital of Fort-de-Francto franceinfo
We can see that the incidence rate has certainly fallen last week according to the latest figures because people were a little afraid to move around because of the roadblocks but at our level, hospital pressure has been increasing for about ten days now.
Your emergency manager interviewed indicates that everything has failed. Do you agree with this observation?
Yes, this observation was circumstantial since we are facing a double crisis. Today, we see that things are improving significantly on the dam front and we hope that will continue. But clearly, at our level, we are facing a Covid wave that we are seeing rising. We are trying to adapt and thanks to the reinforcements that came from Public Health France, we are able to keep almost our 60 intensive care beds open. But it is true that the situation is extremely tense and I understand the medical and nursing teams who were on the verge of breaking up recently with this double crisis.
Do you have enough back-up caregivers or do you still need help?
Additional reinforcements were requested because the establishment suffers from a lack of attractiveness, given the current context and the images circulating. We have a fairly high turnover rate, particularly in terms of medical staff.
“We have departures which are announced but arrivals are becoming increasingly rare, due to this recent loss of attractiveness. Fortunately, we have the reinforcements which are present at the national level.”
Stéphane Berniac, University Hospital of Fort-de-Francto franceinfo
We also have an agreement to be able to reactivate certain medical evacuations to France for patients who are in Covid intensive care, or even non-Covid, and also for patients who are awaiting surgical interventions. Evacuations are expected in the coming days. As in the 4th wave, we will have evacuations mainly to Île-de-France.
Vaccination is progressing a bit. Are we on the right track?
We are on the stagnation of the number of vaccinated in Martinique. We are on 40% of the population over 12 years who are vaccinated. On caregivers, there too, there is a stagnation in the number of vaccinated caregivers. Within the establishment, we are a little over 50% of professionals who are vaccinated. This is obviously largely insufficient, especially in relation to this resurgence of the Covid. We are really calling on the population to strictly respect barrier gestures and to be aware that vaccination is really one of the tools that will allow us to limit the impact of this wave.