“It is the government that is responsible for the tragedies that will happen”, alerted Friday on franceinfo Véronique Hentgen, pediatrician at the Versailles-Le Chesnay hospital center, while 4,000 pediatric caregivers sent an open letter to Emmanuel Macron, Friday, October 21, to denounce the saturation of hospital pediatric services. The situation was “predictable”, underlines Véronique Hentgen. According to her, “It is endangering these children. We are endangering the society of tomorrow.”
franceinfo: What do you denounce in this open letter?
Veronique Hentgen: We are in a situation that was foreseeable. Bronchiolitis is an epidemic that affects babies every winter. And we have known for several months now, even years, that the state of the public hospital is such that we are going to have more and more difficulty welcoming these babies. And currently, this is what is happening. We are not even at the peak of the usual bronchiolitis epidemic yet and we are already completely oversaturated.
What is the situation regarding the management of the bronchiolitis epidemic?
The current problem is that a certain number of resuscitation beds, in particular on the major Parisian services, are closed for lack of staff. So they can no longer accommodate babies who need them. Just because we don’t have room doesn’t mean we’re going to decide they don’t need resuscitation. So babies who need resuscitation need to be transferred to other services outside Ile-de-France, which is still a situation that is really unreasonable. So it’s really endangering these children. We denounce the tragedies that will happen. And honestly, we consider that it is the government that is responsible for the tragedies that will happen.
What exactly are you asking of the President of the Republic? Is there a solution to implement quickly?
Urgency is really a strong political decision. We need ratios. Caregivers must be assured that they can do their job well. Caregivers must be assured that they do not need to care for more than a certain number of patients. So it is for example for a couple nurses-caregivers, four to six children. The second thing is that the salaries must be decent and that the remuneration, especially for the permanence of care at the public hospital, must be up to par.
This will make it possible to bring back all the people who are leaving because they are disgusted with their job. We were proud to work at the public hospital. We always are. But it’s harder and harder to keep this pride because political decisions put us in a situation where we can no longer be proud of our job. There is an absolute urgency to take political decisions. Not making a decision is putting children in danger. And the children are the adults tomorrow. We are endangering the society of tomorrow.