In France, a quarter of children live in a pediatric medical wasteland : they are between 0 and 10 years old and do not have a pediatrician less than 45 minutes from their home to ensure their follow-up. This is what the UFC-Que Choisir affirms. This Tuesday, the consumer association published an interactive map to denounce the inequalities of access to care in the country.
The Landes department is not the best endowed. In the Mont-de-Marsan sector, there is only one liberal pediatrician.
“The last pediatricians from Auch have recently left so there are even children who come from the Gers” – Maylis Dellestable, pediatrician at Saint-Pierre-Dumont
Her 8-month-old son in her arms, Faouzia enters the pediatrician’s office. This mother took some time to find a specialist in Mont-de-Marsan: “I ended up calling the hospital, they advised me to go to Doctolib”. She made this appointment a month ago. Stop waiting a bit, she prefers to have her baby seen by a pediatrician rather than a general practitioner. Céline, mother of a 3-year-old girl, too: “We are more reassured because he is a specialist.”
Céline lives in Saint-Sever, in the Landes, 20 kilometers from Saint-Pierre-Dumont. But Maylis Dellestable does not only receive patients from the department. According to her, “the last pediatricians from Auch have recently left so there are even children who come from the Gers”.
The duration of each consultation reduced
Every day, Maylis Dellestable keeps slots for emergencies, his diary is almost always full. In his office, the consultations are linked, they last 20 minutes on average. “I’m learning to say ‘we’re going to talk about a first problem and we’ll meet again next time to tackle another problem’, I have less time ahead of me than before, that’s for sure.”
The pediatrician takes new patients but sometimes refuses certain appointments when they are taken on D-Day, “in times of epidemic it happens four to five times a day easy”, she assures. Maelys Dellestable says she is the only liberal pediatrician in Mont-de-Marsan and its outskirts “for a good five years”.
“The last installations were on the Basque coast and in the Bordeaux region.” The specialist smiles: “Obviously, Mont-de-Marsan is not the place that attracts young interns the most.” For her, one of the solutions: to train more pediatricians.