TESTIMONY
"I have these two dramas that affect me: the loss of my mom, and everyday life at work". Aude Petitpas, nurse at the Reims University Hospital, was the guest of Europe 1 Sunday evening, alongside her father, Lionel Petitpas. Both share the same grief: their mother and wife died suddenly of coronavirus on March 29. "I accompanied my wife to the ambulance, she said hello to me, and I never saw her again," said Lionel Petitpas.
At the microphone of Europe 1, father and daughter told of their fight and their anger. A fight so that the deceased people of Covid-19 do not fall into oblivion, and anger at the lack of equipment faced by health care workers.
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"Things will have to move"
"The hardware problem is not getting better, or even getting worse," says Aude Petitpas. If it is not integrated into a Covid service due to health concerns, the classic service in which it works also faces a glaring lack of equipment. "We receive non-Covid patients who pass through the emergency room and can also be infected," she explains. "Today, we welcome patients with expired masks," continues the nurse, expressing his fear of seeing the caregivers spread the pandemic themselves. "We are working with the means at hand, we just learned that our disposable over-blouses were going to be rewashed to serve again," she said.
Faced with the desperate lack of equipment and certain behavior that goes against containment measures, Aude Petitpas becomes angry: "I feel anger at this people who do not realize what is coming, "she says. "But I think that more and more people will be affected by deaths, relatives, friends, we will all be affected and things will have to move."
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A petition to pay tribute to the dead
His father said he was particularly angry with French politicians. "From the president to the Prime Minister, passing by Agnes Buzyn who was facing this crisis, who left her ministry for electoral reasons, and who then, makes an interview by specifying that she knew", denounces Lionel Petitpas. "Everyone knew, and nobody did anything. It is incredible what I can blame them for."
His anger and his pain, Lionel Petitpas says he has transformed them into combat. A fight so that his wife, and all those dying of the coronavirus are never forgotten. "My wife has always been a number in her life, and when she died, she became a quantity," he laments. "All of these dead are anonymous, we don't know their full name, and we don't know they died from the Covid."
So that these deaths do not remain unknown, Lionel Petitpas intends to challenge politicians to install in the municipalities, stelae or plaques in tribute to the victims, on which their names and first names would appear. "At the end of the two world conflicts, we erected war memorials to honor their memory, an initiative must be taken at the municipal or departmental level so that something can be done" for the coronavirus dead, says Lionel Petitpas , also carrying a petition on the internet.
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"We are writing a page in our history"
Faced with this tragedy, personal and national, Aude Petitpas says she supports her father's initiative. "I support him in two ways because we are talking about my mother who died suddenly, but also as a caregiver," she explains. "I don't work in the Covid unit, but I know what the nurses are up to there," said the nurse. "They are totally distraught".
For her, paying tribute to the victims is essential. "We are writing a page in our history," she says. "And it is important not to forget these dead, so that they are not just numbers".