An almost centenary talent: despite his advanced age, 98 years old, a French doctor, Christian Chenay, remains faithful to the Hippocratic oath and continues to visit his patients despite the risks related to the coronavirus.
After overcoming the Spanish flu in the 1920s and cheering during the Second World War, France's oldest doctor is now facing the third major epidemic of his existence. "I have never experienced such a thing - he says quoted by the newspaper 20 Minutes - For typhoid we had gas masks and, fortunately, there was a treatment. Now there is not even a way of knowing who is sick and who is not" . "In the face of this virus, one feels powerless," adds the generalist doctor implanted in Chevilly-Larue, in the Paris suburb.
At the beginning of the epidemic, Monsieur Chenay had been forced to close his study but still continued, despite the risks, to assist his patients residing in a nursing home in the area. A moving story that drew the attention of the British media. "We are all afraid. I am very careful. My wife is terrified, she is right, she is afraid that she will bring the virus home," he says in a moving video interview made by the BBC. Several times a week, the doctor then gets into a car and despite the dangers associated with the invisible enemy he goes to the bedside of his patients in the residence for the elderly. "I can't abandon them in the midst of an epidemic. They can't handle it on their own," he says, adding that at the moment the nursing home where he serves has "had a lot of luck because he wasn't affected by the coronavirus." Pension? "I am almost 99 years old - he concludes - I have to reduce my activity for a whole series of reasons. I work more slowly than before, I have to be a little careful", even if for him, stopping is not a matter. Greetings doctor.