In the midst of an emergency crisis, hospital staff were little mobilized on Tuesday.
For this first day of action of Macron's second five-year term, nine unions and groups of caregivers organized rallies in fifty cities to demand wage and workforce increases.
In Paris, protesters gathered outside the Ministry of Health from 1:30 p.m.
But the mobilization did not fill up.
In Paris, between 200 and 300 demonstrators gathered in front of the Ministry of Health in the early afternoon.
There were about as many of them in Toulouse, where Hélène Isus, a nurse at the CHU, explained that she wanted to "do (her) job correctly, not having to choose between patients".
“There is a lot of professional fatigue, we are called back on our days off”, underlined Noëlle, nursing assistant at the Rennes University Hospital, where a hundred people marched.
Demonstration of caregivers in front of the Ministry of Health.
They are asking for massive hiring and resources to “save the public hospital”
“We must reinstate the suspended caregivers” pic.twitter.com/JVXGTvVagw
— Clement Lanot (@ClementLanot) June 7, 2022
The mobilization also affected smaller localities such as Aurillac, Épernay or Cherbourg, where Emmanuel Macron came last week to announce a "flash mission" on the emergency services.
Because this is where the fire is smoldering: for lack of caregivers, at least 120 services have been forced to limit their activity or are preparing for it, according to a count at the end of May from the Samu-Urgences de France association.
It is also its president François Braun who will have to submit the conclusions of the "flash mission" to the Elysée by the end of June.
Read alsoClosed services, vacant positions… Five minutes to understand the emergency crisis
A justified delay in order to “look at emergency service by emergency service and Samu by Samu, territory by territory where there are needs”, explained Emmanuel Macron, promising “emergency decisions from July”.
But on the ground, time is running out.
“It will probably be the most difficult summer we have ever known.
We must quickly find solutions, ”said the president of the French hospital federation, Frédéric Valletoux.
Expected at the turn, François Braun assured last week that he did not intend to produce "an umpteenth report" but "to write the prescription" expected by the hospital, adding to have "already leads".
Tens of thousands of vacancies
Even before the summer, 60,000 nursing positions are vacant nationwide, eight times more than two years ago.
"In the morning, my colleagues from the AP-HP arrive with a lump in their stomachs," Thierry Amouroux, spokesperson for the SNPI, the nursing union, already explained to the Parisian.
“To plug the holes in the schedule, some are parachuted into another department overnight.
They can go like that from cardiology to oncology”, continued the spokesperson, who calls for a “Marshall plan” for the hospital, failing which “it is the patients who will drink”.
