This Saturday, he himself rolled up his sleeve to receive a first dose of vaccine at the Hôtel-Dieu.
“Everything has been going well since then,” smiles the 65-year-old general practitioner.
For his health, yes, but for the rest Patrick Bouet, president of the national council of the Order of Physicians, has concerns.
Rare in the media, he now calls on the government to be transparent about available stocks.
And health professionals to be massively vaccinated.
Michel Cymes, Axel Kahn, Marina Carrère d'Encausse… so-called media doctors were vaccinated this Wednesday.
Is this a good thing?
DR PATRICK BOUET.
A great doctor, Albert Schweitzer, said “setting an example is not a way to influence others.
It's the only.
Doctors not only need to be vaccinated, but they need to let people know.
The more immune a large number of us are, the more we will engage the wheel of trust.
This is the message that I will send them this Friday during my vows: our responsibility, individual and collective, is to engage, fully, in the vaccination campaign.
The government must quickly give us the means.
Why, in this case, not make the vaccination of caregivers compulsory?
This idea had been put forward by the Order, in particular for the flu vaccine.
For the latter as for the Covid, the political choice was different.
Vaccination is not compulsory, but everything in the history of medicine prompts us to use this decisive weapon against disease.
It is our duty to do so, as required by our code of ethics.
Article 12 asks the doctor to participate in public health actions, especially when it comes to protecting the population.
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What prompts you to remember these rules?
I am worried to see that part of the medical world, fortunately a very small minority, is participating in the wave of conspiracy.
For me, this is all the more disturbing as this skepticism touches on what in other times would have been considered a miracle of science.
Polio, measles ... the vaccine has made us overcome real scourges.
But solicited on social networks, and sometimes in audiovisual media, a certain number of doctors confuse personal conviction and medical reality.
They amalgamate and declare things that do not conform to scientific reality.
It is against our DNA as caregivers.
We have already taken action and will continue to be attentive.
We receive letters with reports and other elements that urge us to be vigilant.
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VIDEO. Covid-19: vaccinated caregivers want to set an example for the French and ... their colleagues
Could you start new procedures?
I do not exclude it.
But above all, this reinforces my certainty that we must give ourselves the means to organize serenely and massively vaccination in France, in all territories.
Especially with the arrival of vaccines like Moderna
(Editor's note: approved this Wednesday)
whose storage conditions are more flexible.
Without this, we will remain in a climate where we must constantly convince.
France has yet decided to accelerate.
Not enough ?
You say “France”, I would say that it is the players in the world of health who have succeeded in convincing decision-makers to step up!
We asked the ministry to stop reading the administrative book from the first to the last page when the exceptional situation must lead us to skip the long passages.
It must be done all the more ardently as many liberal doctors wish to be vaccinated but come up against the questions of organization of the campaign.
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Jean Castex will speak this Thursday.
What are you asking him?
The answer to our three requirements.
One, transparency: how many doses do we have in France and how many will we have?
We have been told so many statements about the number of masks, tests… this time, in concrete terms, we are told the quantity of vaccines available, and where.
Two, the multiplication of vaccination centers.
Three, the guarantee that everyone, caregivers and non-carers, will have access to it.
Let us show that vaccination is a normal act.
In the end, maybe it will snowball and maybe we'll be surprised how many people will go to her!