France: Doctors began a strike and close their offices until January 2

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

The applause for his titanic task every evening in the terrible days of Covid have already been forgotten. Today French doctors are questioning their own profession, when there is a complete shortage of medicines, including antibiotics, 83 percent of which are manufactured in China, and consultations are paid for nothing.

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

French doctors, who have their offices in the city and not in hospitals, are fighting for an increase in their consultation prices. Some charge only 25 euros and set a limit of 10 minutes per consultation given the number of patients. But they also express their dismay at the meaning of the profession, at the medical deserts throughout the country.

“I don't have more than 10 minutes per patient. We will deal with the other problems in the next consultation,” a generalist in the 16th neighborhood told Clarín.

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

Finding a general practitioner, as required by French social security, is a neighborhood fight. Doctors are not accepting more patients and those who do are on the brink of retirement.

“They haven't seen the worst yet. In 3 or 4 years, the situation will be dramatic, ”said a generalist in the Place de la Nation, in Paris, who wants to keep his anonymity. "It's a long, difficult career, in which you have to constantly improve and nobody considers you," he explained.

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

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

“Per diems have not been increased for fifteen years. Since 2019 the price of the visit has not been revised. We are under water for nonsense and management decisions. There is so much despair among young doctors that they are ready to do something else. The government is discouraging a generation of young, bright and passionate people, who can no longer bear to work like crazy and be treated like rugs,” he explained.

A private surgeon from the American Hospital in Paris explained why it is 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. Health has been left in the hands of managers ”, he denounces.

At La Salpetriére Hospital, one of the largest 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 appointments with patients.

“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 also not in the culture of Djabella, a family doctor in Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis). “I even have a bad conscience to take time off. 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 take it anymore. Our prices do not allow us to invest in personnel and facilities. Our claims are legitimate. We have done long and difficult studies that require many sacrifices, and we have heavy responsibilities, ”he continues.

The doctors, in the middle of negotiating their rates for the next five years, ask for a "Marshall plan" for the profession, emphasizing that saving liberal medicine will save the public hospital, without doctors and nurses as a consequence, without beds because you close their wings .

Thomas Fatôme, director of the French Health Insurance, has promised a three-level hierarchy of acts to take into account the complexity of the consultations. But without announcing a number. And far from responding to the demand of the Doctors for Tomorrow collective to double the price of the consultation from 25 to 50 euros, to reach the European average.

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

Doctors are enraged by multiple bills (PPLs), who want to forcefully send them into medical deserts, while all the examples show that these kinds of coercive measures don't work. There are French regions far from Paris where there are no doctors for miles around.

However, while they share their colleagues' fed up, some practitioners will not go on strike. “We are in a triple epidemic situation: influenza, bronchiolitis and Covid. We cannot take patients hostage,” says Dr. Élise Fraih, a general practitioner in Dachstein, a small Alsatian town, and president of the RéAGjIR union.

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

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

To these are added the strike of the border controllers, who have been replaced by the military, as well as the ambulance workers. The strikes will continue for months because the government does not want to give in.

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

Carlos pointedly 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 the bills and forcing them to rely on food banks. He praised the volunteers for helping those in need.

He decided to reward compassion when workers are fighting with the government over higher wages, in the face of a very Thatcherite and uncompromising firmness from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

bp

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