France: Doctors go on strike and close their offices until 2 January

It is the painful post-pandemic phenomenon. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, ambulance operators are fed up and strike after Covid and its resurgence. This Monday, independent French doctors went on strike until January 2, when the country will once again be engulfed in Covid, bronchiolitis and a flu epidemic.

The applause for his titanic feat every evening in the terrible days of Covid have already been forgotten. French doctors today they question their own professionwhen there is a complete shortage of medicines, including antibiotics, of which 83% are manufactured in China, and consultations are not paid.

With Covid in China and its sanitary confinements, factories have stopped and there is no production of antibiotics. In France, among others, amoxicillin and paracetamol are missing.

french doctors, which are based in the city and not in hospitals, are fighting for an increase in the prices of their consultancy. Some charge as little as 25 euros and set a limit of 10 minutes per consultation given the number of patients. But they also express their dismay at the significance of the profession, at medical deserts across the country.

“I don’t have more than 10 minutes per patient. We will address the other issues in the next consultation,” said a generalist from the 16th Ward a clarion.

After their December 1 and 2 strike went unanswered, they plan to strengthen the movement. They will close their studios again from today, December 26 to January 2, according to the call of the Médicos para Mañana collective and several unions including SML, FMF and UFMLS. There will be no consultations or doctors at home.

Finding a generalist, impossible

Finding a general practitioner, as required by French social security, is a neighborhood struggle. Doctors they no longer accept patients and those who accept are on the verge of retirement.

“They haven’t seen the worst yet. In 3 or 4 years the situation will be dramatic,” said a generalist on the Place de la Nation in Paris, who wishes to remain anonymous. “It’s a long and difficult career, where you have to constantly improve and nobody considers us“, he explained.

In thirty-five years of practice, Dr. Pascal Charbonnel, general practitioner in Ulis (Essonne) has never closed his practice. But this time he will close down and join the strike.

“All the easy acts will be given to pharmacists and nurses, leaving the doctors only complex acts at a ridiculous price. This habit of putting patches everywhere means that no one is in his place and that the job no longer makes sense », he complains.

“It has been fifteen years since the per diems have not been increased. Since 2019, the price of the visit has not been revised. We are underwater for trifles and management decisions. There is so much desperation among young doctors that they are ready to do something else. The government is discouraging a generation of young people, bright and passionate, who can no longer stand working like crazy and being treated like carpets,” she explained.

A private surgeon at the American Hospital in Paris explained why it’s so difficult to get an interview with a specialist. “There are no more doctors. They retire, retire or leave. We are all fed up. The system is broken. Healthcare has been left in the hands of executives, ”she complains.

At La Salpetriére hospital, one of the most important in Paris, being able to see a neurologist can take 6 months. At St. Antoine, teachers go to operate or teach abroad, where they are better paid, and cancel patient appointments.

The reasons

“Our claims are legitimate. We have carried out long and difficult studies that require many sacrifices and we have great responsibilities,” explained Sonia Djabella, general practitioner.

The strike is not even in the culture of Djabella, family doctor in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis). “I even have the bad conscience to take a break. But the hour is serious, the doctors rebel. The government adds a tenth year of studies to general practitioners”, says the young woman, who practices in an area classified as a “medical desert”, indignantly. after the departure of eight practitioners in three years.

“We all work a lot. I love what I do, but we can’t do it anymore. Our prices do not allow us to invest in staff and facilities. Our claims are legitimate. We have had long and difficult studies that require many sacrifices, and we have heavy responsibilities ”, she continues.

The doctors, in the midst of negotiating their rates for the next five years, ask for a “Marshall plan” for the profession, underlining that by saving liberal medicine the public hospital will be saved, without doctors and nurses as a consequence, without beds because the wings are closing.

Thomas Fatôme, director of French health insurance, has promised a three-level hierarchy of acts to account for the complexity of the consultations. But without announcing a figure. And far from answering the question of the Medici collective for tomorrow double the price of the consultancy from 25 to 50 eurosto reach the European average.

“They don’t put anything on the table. The government tries to rot and will end up radicalizing the movement”, warned Jean-Paul Hamon, family doctor in Clamart (Hauts-de-Seine) and honorary president of the FMF.

Doctors are enraged by the multiple bills (PPL), who want to forcefully send them to medical deserts, while all the examples show that this kind of coercive measures don’t work. There are French regions far from Paris where there are no doctors within miles.

However, while sharing their colleagues’ fatigue, some practitioners do not strike. “We are in a triple epidemic situation: flu, bronchiolitis and Covid. We cannot take patients hostage.”consider Dr. Élise Fraih, general practitioner in Dachstein, a small Alsatian town and president of the RéAGjIR union.

In Île-de-France the emergency indicators are already in red with peaks of more than 20,000 calls at 15 a day.

strikes in Britain

In Great Britain, nurses announce two new strikes for 11 and 23 January, in addition to that of the railway workers, in the middle of Boxing Day, when those who went to spend Christmas with their families go home.

To them the strike of the border controllers is addedwho have been replaced by the military, such as ambulance operators. The strikes will continue for months because the government does not want to give in.

In his first 9-minute speech after his mother’s death, the new King Charles III thanked doctors, nurses, ambulance workers and the emergency and health service for their dedication, when the NHS does not know how to deal with the wave of strikes in the kingdom.

Carlo deliberately praised”the selfless dedication” of our “emergency services, who work tirelessly to keep us all safe”.

He stressed his concern about the cost-of-living crisis, which is making it difficult for families to pay bills and forcing them to rely on food banks. He praised volunteers for helping those in need.

He has decided to reward compassion when workers squabble with the government over higher wages, in the face of very Thatcherite and uncompromising steadfastness from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

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