Paris (AFP)

From doctors to caregivers, from deans to students, it is a breathless public hospital that is expected to demonstrate Thursday to demand more resources and manpower, while the government polishes a "plan of support" very expected.

Under budget pressure for years, brought to a boil by the emergency strike, the pressure cooker of the hospital eventually exploded.

The call for a "big event", launched a month ago by the new collective Inter-Hôpitaux, has been full of support. Starting with the collective Inter-Emergency, the origin of an unprecedented social movement, started in March in Paris and spread throughout the country, with another 268 institutions affected Monday.

The demands have not changed since the beginning: increase of wages, increase of the workforce and reopening of the removed beds.

Rarely, all unions in the hospital public service have rallied, especially the CGT, FO and CFDT, which are struggling so much to agree on other topics at the national level.

In practice, Snphare anesthetists rely on "historical mobilization", while the gynecologists of Syngof "prepared the strike by avoiding any non-emergency care programming".

On the student side, the Anemf carabins and the future midwives of the Anesf joined the movement, with the blessing of the deans of medicine, who declared a "day without activities in all the faculties".

Their elders in boarding school, essential to the operation of hospital services, are for their part consulted by their inter-union (Isni) on a possible "total and unlimited strike from Tuesday, December 10".

The concern goes back to the founding of the medical commissions of establishments (CME), which evoke a "state of emergency republican".

Even the College of Physicians "understands this disarray" due to "ever more difficult working conditions" and expects "a response to the stakes".

- Matignon in the line of fire -

Agnès Buzyn promised in response a "plan of support" which will emphasize "a better current investment" and "the revaluation of the wages, in particular at the beginning of career".

But the Minister of Health has already failed twice to get out of this conflict: neither the monthly bonus of 100 euros paid since July, nor the plan of "refoundation" announced in September were enough to lower the tension.

Protesters are now aiming higher: the procession Paris will start at 14:00 Port-Royal towards the Invalides, hoping that their representatives will be received at Matignon.

In any case, they will find an open door to the Senate, dominated by the right, where a delegation will be welcomed by the Social Affairs Committee.

In the midst of a review of the 2020 budget of the Sécu by the upper house, the debates are focused on the increase in health expenditure, for the time limited to 2.1% in the hospital, when strikers demand double.

"Discussions are ongoing" on the subject, but "they require difficult arbitrations," Ms. Buzyn admitted to senators on Tuesday.

Opposite, the Ministry of Economy is watching over the grain and has already said that a recovery, even partial, of the huge debt of public hospitals (30 billion euros) "is not an option considered."

And Bruno Le Maire warned that, "if we spend money for the hospital", it will "find (e) savings face".

To open the lock of Bercy, the key will come from Emmanuel Macron, who estimated at the end of October that "it will be necessary that one puts means, because it is necessary that one answers the suffering of the health personnel".

At three weeks of a massive strike in transport against the pension reform, there is urgency.

© 2019 AFP