former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn recounts the harassment she suffered when she was a doctor

In a documentary broadcast on M6 on Sunday, the hematologist deplores having been a sexual fantasy for certain colleagues and confides that he left the profession because of the harassment he suffered for years.

Almost a month after the revelations of Karine Lacombe, who accused emergency physician Patrick Pelloux of “sexual and moral harassment”, the word is still being released at the hospital. In the documentary Not so white blousesdirected by Marie Portolano and Grégoire Huet, broadcast on M6 on Sunday May 5, former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn also recounts having been the victim of moral and sexual harassment when she was a doctor. “It was so violent, such an exclusion. I was exhausted,” she confides in front of the camera.

This hematology specialist spent most of her career at Necker hospital in Paris. In 2003, she was 40 years old and was preparing to become a teacher. Faced with a commission composed exclusively of men, responsible for selecting future hospital executives, Agnès Buzyn remembers, at that moment, having “realized the anomaly”, A “serious dysfunction”. But the worst is yet to come.

Once a professor, she understands that this new status does not please all of her colleagues. Agnès Buzyn feels a “immense aggression” on their part, as if they “couldn’t stand having a woman hierarchically above them”. According to her, her new title made them “berserk”. She also says she was reduced to a “sexual fantasy” for four years. And give the example of this representative of doctors at the Necker hospital, who allegedly said behind his back: “It’s funny, every time I see her come into my office, I see her with a whip and boots.”

“I was pre-suicidal”

Faced with all this “violence” and this “shelving”Agnès Buzyn ends up returning the blouse. “I decided to leave my profession as a doctor”, she says. A radical decision, motivated in part by an instinct for survival. “I was pre-suicidal”she confides, adding that her children were also a reason for her not to take action.

The rest of her career, Agnès Buzyn spends it within public institutions linked to health and at nuclear. She was then promoted to Minister of Health in 2017, in the government of Edouard Philippe. A position that she will occupy until 2020, before the Covid-19 epidemic explodes in France.

Other “media” female doctors have spoken out in recent weeks to break the silence, giving rise to the #MeToo movement at the hospital. Marine Ltemporel, Miss France 2013, for example, recounted having faced “questions about [son] privacy”as “do you like this or that position?”. She also testifies in the documentary on sexist and sexual violence in hospitals broadcast on Sunday.

But the genesis of this #MeToo at the hospital stems above all from the testimony of Karine Lacombe, published in Paris Match on April 10. The infectious disease specialist has since met the Minister for Health, Frédéric Valletoux, to discuss the attacks of which she accuses Patrick Pelloux. The minister then launched a series of consultations with representatives of doctors and interns. On April 24, he promised on France Inter “concrete avenues” and “concrete proposals” to put an end to the “culture of impunity”.