For years now, the Support Committee of Le Blanc Hospital and local elected officials have been sounding the alarm about the catastrophic situation of access to care for the inhabitants of Le Blanc, and more generally of Brenne. To talk about it and mobilize the populations even more, the Committee invited Christophe Prudhomme, spokesperson for the Association of Emergency Physicians of France this Saturday, April 2. He gave a lecture in front of about 70 people on the theme “The public health service in danger”.
“Policies need to be changed urgently”
The emergency physician explains that the situation in the Centre-Val-de-Loire is “the most dramatic” in terms of the medical population, which obviously affects rural areas. “Le Blanc is the typical example of these local hospitals which are dismantled, and people are forced to go to hospitals which are far away and overcrowded”.
He specifies that these dismantling have snowball effects on reference hospitals.
When we close local hospitals, we do not complete the resources of reference hospitals, which are overwhelmed, and the system collapses.
He takes as an example the Orleans hospital, which only receives vital emergenciesbecause of sick leaves for burn out.
For Christophe Prudhomme, the solution lies in a change in public policy. “What we are advocating are health centers with hospitals, an offer of care on the territory with salaried doctors”. He also castigates local decisions, such as in Châteauroux, to invest public money in private clinics.
Developing territories to help doctors
These investments must also go through a development to bring doctors to rural areas. “Coercion does not work, we know that. But young doctors want to work in groups, we must encourage the different professions to settle”. For him, the main thing is also to free up time for doctors, overwhelmed by administrative tasks.
It is not simply on the question of the obligation of installation that we must act, but on the mode of exercise and the mode of remuneration
Christophe Prudhomme insists: change will not happen without the support of local elected officials and populations.