François Salachas ensures keeping a cool head. Yet since Thursday morning February 27, the neurologist has become, somewhat unwillingly, the spokesperson for the entire hospital public service after a video that has gone viral. An exhibition that the doctor considers up to the suffering of the nursing staff.
That day Emmanuel Macron is visiting the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital with the Minister of Health Olivier Véran. He comes to greet the medical staff in contact with coronavirus patients. It was during this meeting time that François Salachas challenged Emmanuel Macron. “The healthcare profession as a whole has made all the necessary efforts. We are at the end of the line, ” he says in a firm and calm tone. To which the head of state tried in vain to answer, immediately cut by the neurologist who, not without an ounce of arrogance retorted: "We need a shock." It seems that you like shocks, so we need a shock of attractiveness [...] it is absolutely necessary to urgently refinance the public hospital ».
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The sequence, which lasts a little less than two minutes, has been seen millions of times. Many people praised the doctor for his speech crying out for truth and sincerity. A speech that François Salachas had not yet prepared. "I was informed of his arrival a few hours before," he says. "With us it's been running continuously for five months, I didn't need rehearsal or even a coach, as some people have asked me!" he explains amused.
Macron "must play its role of Jupiter!"
Because in addition to being the head of a care unit for Charcot's disease at La Pitié-Salpêtrière - a profession where you do not "chase butterflies" to quote him - François Salachas is representative of Collective Inter Hospitals whose objective is to defend the public hospital. In this approach, the collective was also received by the former Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn on February 20. "We quickly understood that she would do nothing," says the doctor, who considers Emmanuel Macron as the one and only decision-maker. “It's now, it's here, it's Macron. It has the capacity to resolve the crisis ”. And the latter to resume: "He must prove that he is not there by chance, he must play his role of Jupiter!"
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For Doctor Salachas, if Macron does not act, he will only reinforce the image of a president disconnected from reality, absent, "on another planet" . Even more, it would be "a new disappointment for all its supporters". One thing is certain, the neurologist does not lose hope. "Our President is an intelligent man, aware of the issues, he only has to make the necessary decisions " he underlines. In the meantime, an appointment was made at the end of March between Emmanuel Macron and the Inter Hôpitaux collective .
François Salachas, who has been practicing for 25 years, hopes that his “cry from the heart and the brain” will restore a little of its splendor to the nursing body which has become a “suffering body”.
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