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This is a change that future mothers would have done well during the last days of their pregnancy.
Melyssa lives five minutes from the maternity hospital in Sarlat-la-Canéda (Dordogne), in the Jean Leclaire hospital center.
Her term is scheduled for April 19 and she was to go to the hospital where her first two children were born.
However, this Tuesday, the hospital warned her that due to a lack of staff, she could not give birth in Sarlat, but would have to go to Périgueux, more than an hour away by car.
The same announcement was made to about twenty future mothers, whose term is approaching.
"
In an hour's drive, we still have time to have a problem,
" fears Melyssa.
"
It's worrying, we were told to call the Samu at the slightest alert, but we are afraid to call them for nothing.
»
"
Knowing that I'm going to have to give birth in a maternity ward where I've never been, it creates a little more questions and anxiety
," admits Melyssa.
"
We know almost the whole team in Sarlat and with the pregnancy follow-up, we get used to the nursing staff
", she explains, also speaking of "
stress
" at the idea of having to take care of the transfer of his medical record.
Although her third pregnancy is considered to be at risk due to phlebitis, it is above all the situation in the hospital that worries her.
"
I'm not angry yet, because I haven't been told about the maternity ward closing, but about a staffing problem
," she explains.
it would be catastrophic for Sarlat
”, a town of around 10,000 inhabitants, in the heart of the Périgord noir.
Read alsoSmall maternities under threat: the challenge of reconciling security and proximity
A lack of nursing staff
In this regard, the Regional Health Agency (ARS) of New Aquitaine wants to be reassuring, recalling that "
the existence of a maternity hospital in Sarlat is not in question, it corresponds to a need of the population, everything must be done to maintain it
”.
This closure is due to a staff shortage.
The establishment "
lacks several pediatricians and gynecologists-obstetricians and is therefore unable to provide secure care and quality 24 hours a day for deliveries
", which forced the ARS to reorganize deliveries. from April.
The maternity wards of Périgueux and Bergerac remain open, but from this Wednesday, March 29, that of Sarlat will only function as a local perinatal center.
"
To facilitate their last days of pregnancy, future mothers will be able to benefit from transport and hotel accommodation for five nights, near the maternity ward where they will have chosen to give birth, ”specifies the ARS
.
This closure is also linked to the application of a temporary employment law, which caps the salary of temporary workers.
While the rate of interim doctors varies between 35 and 60% nationally, it is 54 to 100% at the Sarlat maternity hospital, specifies the ARS.
For Nicole Marty, President of the Sarlat Public Hospital and Maternity Defense Committee, as long as permanent recruitments have not been made, this closure, even announced as temporary, is therefore a bad omen.
According to her, this decision tends towards the transformation of rural maternities into simple perinatal centers.
While Sarlat welcomed around 300 births last year, Nicole Marty finds "
unthinkable to imagine that all these mothers will have to get on the road
".
In the rural and tourist area that is Sarladais, "
Sarlat hospital is geographically essential
", adds the president of the association, recalling that the maternity ward had already been closed in 2021, and that the intensive care unit has to him definitively put the key under the door in 2012. "
We fight so that, from birth to death, we have a public service of quality and proximity
", finally explains Nicole Marty.
A rally is therefore organized this Thursday in front of the hospital, at 3 p.m., to denounce this closure.