They are around sixty elected officials from Allier, Puy-de-Dôme, Creuse, Cher to alert to the situation. On November 1, there will no longer be a pediatrician in the pediatrics department from Montluçon hospital. Doctor Hiba Traaf, the head of department, resigns.
“When I arrived in 2018, we were seven paediatricians in all. Today, I’m the only one registered. I have the help of 1.8 full-time equivalents, who are actually two foreign pediatricians, in training”, explains the young woman. Three people to manage nearly 1,000 deliveries per year and their emergencies, 11,000 unscheduled consultations per year, follow-ups for asthma, epilepsy, vaccinations and a hospitalization service that can accommodate up to 26 beds in winter, not to mention the administrative work and the reception of interns.
“We take too many risks, Dr. Traaf says today. Both for us as a doctor in relation to our physical and mental health. Ultimately, if it was just that, why not. There, it will affect the children. I say stop. I am there to care for children, not to hurt them.”
Alerts, but no response
The situation greatly worries the elected officials of the territory. Nearly 200,000 inhabitants live in the Montluçon basin. “Closing the service would have serious consequences in terms of access to care, services, attractiveness for our territory”, says Nicolas Simonnet, the mayor of Nouhant in Creuse.
Frédéric Laporte, the mayor of Montluçon and president of the hospital’s supervisory board, explains that he has already sent a dozen letters to the Ministry of Health and to the Elysée, which have remained unanswered for the moment. “Now that’s enough, you have to stop ignoring us, says the mayor. This is also how territories feel abandoned. Don’t forget to manage them. It’s not just the big cities and the big university hospitals.”
The mayor of Montluçon has planned a large rally on September 17 in front of the hospital gates.
The ARS mobilizes the health reserve
The regional health agency recalls for its part that the lack of pediatricians affects all of France. She asked the president of the regional hospital group, that is to say the director of the Clermont University Hospital, to find solutions to maintain the activity of the service beyond November 1.
The ARS also specifies that it has requested the health reserve, a Public Health France system bringing together volunteer health professionals to help in tense situations.
The mayor of Montluçon welcomes these advances but reminds us that we must avoid “the overload elsewhere because the territorial network will break up elsewhere.” If the patients of Montluçon finally deport to the hospitals of Vichy, Moulins or Clermont, these establishments will have to have the means to receive this new influx.