INTERVIEW
In the newspaper Le Monde , the president of the departmental council and five mayors of Seine-Saint-Denis denounce Saturday the excess mortality linked to Covid-19 in this department. Guest of Europe 1 Saturday, Christophe Prudhomme, spokesperson for the Association of Emergency Physicians of France (AMUF) and doctor at the Samu of Seine-Saint-Denis abounds and questions the state of the equipment of the 93.
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He reminds in particular that in Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest department in France, "citizens of the shadows" like cleaning women or garbage collectors are busy to continue to make society work. To this large proportion of precarious and fragile populations facing the coronavirus is added "degraded public services", according to him.
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"We were the first department in Île-de-France to no longer have resuscitation beds available at the peak of the epidemic. In Seine-Saint-Denis, there is less public service, fewer doctors and fewer hospitals. Our hospitals are in a sorry state. We lack a certain number of specialized services. The maintenance of the buildings remains to be desired, "says Christophe Prudhomme.
"Measures for the poorest"
The doctor therefore calls on the authorities to come to the aid of the population of this department. "The government will have to understand that to restore equal treatment for citizens, measures are needed for the poorest people who are essential today," he asked.
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According to Christophe Prudhomme, the vulnerability of these poor people to Covid-19 is explained by "the very difficult conditions" in which they live. "We tried to stigmatize them concerning the non-respect of confinement. In Seine-Saint-Denis, when you live in Chêne pointu, where the film Les Misérables was filmed and you live eight in fifty square meters, you have to that we can get out a little, "said the emergency room doctor.
He also claims that many residents of the department are in "poor health". He said that he had to "transfer patients sometimes to the other end of the region, which leads to compilations, a loss of chance for these patients and for us at Samu a work overload that we will have could have avoided. "
The global crisis of the hospital behind the scenes
For Christophe Prudhomme, Seine-Saint-Denis is therefore suffering the consequences of past management. "What this crisis reveals is that we are in a world where inequalities have increased in recent years. I have lived in Seine-Saint-Denis for forty years and I have seen the situation deteriorate", explains- he. "For fifteen years, we, the emergency workers, have been short of intensive care beds. We have closed 100,000 beds in twenty years in France."
The doctor noted, however, "fewer calls to the emergency medical service and fewer visits to the emergency room for new patients". "We must at all costs stabilize this plateau phase," he concludes.