The town hall of Pont-Audemer had however worked for months to convince them to settle in Eure, the most important medical desert in metropolitan France.
Two Romanian dentists recently installed in Pont-Audemer (Eure), throw in the towel, reports France Bleu Normandie on Wednesday June 21. They had moved into the new medical center in Pont-Audemer less than a year ago. But the relatively recurrent racist insults, according to the town hall, prompted the two practitioners to pack their bags. The municipality had however worked for months to bring in the two specialists. The Eure department is the largest medical desert in metropolitan France, according to the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees).
The practitioners plan to leave at the end of the month, the time to finish the files in progress, and do not take on new clients. “It’s 2023, we don’t care about nationality, color, if there are a lot of foreign doctors, it’s because they deserve it”, indignant Quentin a resident of the city who still has not found a dentist.
“A huge mess”
Siradjoudine Zeinou, another dentist from Pont-Audemer, will not be able to accommodate their patients: “I already have more than 15,000 clients, when the new dentists arrived, we were able to give them some of our patients, but now we’re going to have to refuse some. We only have two arms, we’re overloaded.”
“It’s a huge messlaments on France Bleu Normandie the mayor of Pont-Audemer, Alexis Darmois. It was the fruit of dozens and dozens of hours of work.”
“To see them leave our territory because a minority has found nothing better to do than to insult them. It leaves us with a feeling of waste and disappointment.”
Alexis Darmois, Mayor of Pont-Audemerat France Blue Normandy
“People were refusing to pay them because they were Romanian and that is absolutely unacceptable.” The mayor also notes “a liberation of racist speech in our country, and in our rural areas too. I was extremely surprised that it could go so far and take shape with such violence, especially with regard to people who enter the framework of a public service mission and which are extremely useful for the territory”.