"I am the daughter of a war victim," writes Deborah Alloun in a text she sent to us. The 29-year-old woman lost her father, Paul Alloun, on April 23. The sexagenarian, who lived in Val-d'Oise and practiced in La Courneuve is the fourth general practitioner swept away by the coronavirus in Seine-Saint-Denis, a department hit hard by the epidemic.
Déborah and Elie Alloun, two of the deceased's three children, are angry. "The lack of means to protect our city doctors is deplorable," writes Deborah again. The provision of protection was not at all up to this war. We are at war it seems. "
When we reach her by phone, she tells of this father, a "passionate" doctor, established for 33 years in La Courneuve, a few steps from the town hall. As a little girl, she saw him leave in the morning from the family home in Val-d'Oise: “He had his little routine, woke up very early, read, played sports, and had breakfast with my mother before go. He came home at 11:00 p.m. He liked to take time with his patients. "
Many tributes
The latter gave him back well if we believe the dozens of messages left on the Facebook page of the PCF mayor of La Courneuve, Gilles Poux, who announced the sad news. There is the reassuring, familiar figure of one of these “family doctors” anchored in working-class neighborhoods, to whom we entrust his diabetes, children's vaccines, and the hassles of everyday life.
"More than a doctor, he was like a father to me", wrote one of them, while adjectives jostled over the messages: "devoted", "benevolent" ... "He was the soul of this neighborhood to which he was devoted, ”says another. And then there is this touching message: "Rest in peace our dear little doctor, I did not tell my mother that you died, I am too afraid of his reaction." She loves you so much and swears by you. "
"He didn't want to stop working"
Until the beginning of March, Paul Alloun had not changed his habits. He had just turned 61. "He started to be sick a week before confinement," says Deborah. He didn't want to stop working. He was afraid for his patients. And he was afraid that he could no longer pay his charges. We did not yet know that there would be aid and the possibility of deferring payments. You know, for a liberal, the Urssaf, taxes, that represents enormous sums… ”
At the pharmacy, the doctor had managed to get a few masks - "less than 10!" At the insistence of his children, he ended up registering on Doctolib, the site allowing to practice teleconsultation.
But his condition got worse. On March 28, "he told my mother to call for help," adds the young woman, her voice deaf. It seems that he said to the firefighters: They let me work like that ... "
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Still moved, she regrets "the coldness, the lack of empathy" of the doctors of the Parisian hospital where he was, "who kept calling us to tell us that our father was in a catastrophic state. The nurses, on the contrary, were very comforting. ”
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