"
Mr. President, your silence is deafening
."
No less than 10,000 pediatric health professionals sent an open letter to the President of the Republic on Wednesday, November 30.
Faced with the epidemic of bronchiolitis which affects the little ones, caregivers are alarming, in this forum published in
Le Monde
, of intolerable working conditions and the overload of services, while "
the cancellations of care
have been accumulating for a month “and”
the postponements of surgery
“, “
unique response of our guardianship to the emergency
”.
And the caregivers describe the crisis scenes that are now part of their daily life: "
Children hospitalized on stretchers or on their parents' knees in the emergency room, in an office refitted for the occasion, children intubated and hospitalized without a room in the corridor of resuscitation, care too late and precarious care, premature returns home and disaster returns of children sent home for lack of space, transfers outside sectors by the dozen in resuscitation, but also in conventional hospitalization
".
Second cry of winter
This is the second time at the start of winter that the pediatric services have tried to draw the executive's attention to this situation.
On October 21, after two weeks of winter epidemics, however "
usual and predictable
", four thousand caregivers already denounced in
Le Parisien
the saturation of pediatric hospital services, the results of "
irresponsible political inaction
".
“
A month later, we remain without a response from you
”, point out this time the pediatricians, almost three times more likely to sign this new forum.
“
We thought that transferring children 300 kilometers from home was a major degradation of care, we now see that there could be worse: no longer being able to transfer because the epidemic has swept everywhere, saturating all the services of French pediatrics
”, they warn.
Faced with the lack of space, caregivers say they are forced to send not only “
adolescents to adult services
”, but also now “
children aged 3 years
”.
The first victims of this overload are the “
children with disabilities, chronic illnesses and child psychiatry
” awaiting treatment or surgery, underline the caregivers, qualifying them as “
now permanent valve of the hospital, eternal variable of adjustment
” .
"
Mr. President of the Republic, this is our society's last chance to stop the massive bleeding of caregivers who leave the public hospital, disillusioned, exhausted, guilty
", conclude the pediatricians, who beg the president of undertake to "
put the hospital service back at the center of decision-making
".
