Faced with the heatwave episode that is looming over the next few days, “the hospital will cope”assured Friday the Minister of Health Aurélien Rousseau, estimating that if the situation is “tense” in the emergency room, it is not “worse” only in 2022.
“The hospital has coped, the hospital will cope, (…) the organization of the health system, it is extremely robust and it will be robust in the face of this episode of heat”said Aurélien Rousseau on France info.
Nineteen departments are placed on Friday in heat wave orange vigilance by Météo France, a heat stroke which should further intensify. In hospitals, forced to close or “filter” the entrance to many emergency services in the face of a lack of caregivers, practitioners fear a new influx of patients. Several representatives of emergency physicians this week judged the extent of these closures “worse” only in 2022.
“I would not say that the situation is more serious”, replied the Minister of Health. “She is still tense, and she will be tense after the summer too, there will not suddenly be a return to normal. We have a problem of availability” caregivers, he continued.
“At the slightest discomfort, (…) we call 15”
“It’s true (…) that we have areas of tension everywhere on the territory, but today we anticipate them better”. “The passage through the 15th means that no Frenchman who needs care has remained without a medical response”, assured Mr. Rousseau. He reminded “the reflex” to have: “at the slightest discomfort, (…) we call 15”.
This summer, “Hospitals and in particular university hospitals have played their role as a platform and support for smaller hospitals which, sometimes, cannot hold on”. Targeted one-off closures make it possible to have “hospitals that remain open during the day” or closed only “in deep night”. “It’s not satisfactory” but this “makes it possible to maintain, in territories where we could no longer, provide care”he said.
If an infant with bronchiolitis had to be transferred on Sunday from Ile-de-France to Rouen due to a lack of beds available in pediatric intensive care, “there are few beds because fortunately there are few needs. There, we were in a period where cumulative“holidays and sick leave, he explained. He recalled that a “new therapy will be deployed at the start of the school year”who must “to reduce the incidence of bronchiolitis in an extremely massive way”.