Mathias Wargon, emergency doctor and director of emergencies at the Delafontaine hospital in Saint-Denis, was the guest of 8:30 a.m. franceinfo Thursday May 26. He answered questions from Lorrain Sénéchal and Neila Latrous.
The “clientelism” of the reintroduction of non-vaccinated caregivers
For Mathias Wargon, the reintegration of caregivers who are not vaccinated against Covid-19, despite the obligation to which they have been subject since September 15, 2021, “is just clientelism and demagoguery”. At the end of April, the President of the Republic nevertheless opened the door to this possibility to deal with the shortage of personnel in hospitals, in particular in the emergency services.
Mathias Wargon believes that the caregivers who got vaccinated in the first weeks made a “effort” and have demonstrated “of enormous courage”. And wonders: “So we are going to say to those who did not want to be vaccinated: ‘Come back to the hospital’?”. He believes that unvaccinated caregivers are “those who don’t believe in contemporary medicine, those who believe that vaccines kill, those who read the conspiratorial press”.
The number of unvaccinated caregivers is estimated at 15,000, according to figures from the Ministry of Health but, according to Mathias Wargon, “we don’t even know” how many they are. “That’s not what makes the difference”, he concludes. The emergency doctor is in favor of compulsory vaccination “for everyone” and not just for caregivers.
A “regulation” of emergency room entries
“How are we going to hold out this summer? And then in the longer term, in the short term and in the medium term?”, wondered Mathias Wargon, faced with the shortage of caregivers at the hospital. His solution: “regulate the entrance to the emergency room”as has been the case since May 18 at the CHU Pellegrin in Bordeaux.
In France, many emergency services must partially close, especially at night, for lack of nursing staff. In the emergency room of the Delafontaine hospital in Saint-Denis where Mathias Wargon works, “we operate with half of our paramedical staff”. The emergency physician has been pleading for several years for regulation at the entrance to the emergency room “from this summer” as “It’s done in many countries”he assures us, which would make it possible to focus on the most critical patients. “Demagogy says: ‘We are not going to regulate, anyone can go there’. But why can anyone benefit from a system?he asks himself. You can’t get anywhere cheaply. It is not possible. We are breaking up the system out of demagogy.”
Watch the show in full: