La Rochelle (AFP)
Health Minister Agnès Buzyn was heckled Friday in La Rochelle, continued in the corridors of emergencies by demonstrators, during a visit to the hospital Saint-Louis, an emergency services for which a budget for renovation or expansion is planned, she assured.
"I came here because there are a lot of staff on strike, staff giving voice," said the minister, greeted in front of the emergency room by a picket line, and various banners proclaiming "Buzyn , stop at the buzyness! "," Urgences à l'agonie ", or" To be treated, take the day! "
The demonstrators, about 150, the strikers of the hospital group of La Rochelle-Rochefort, but also the emergency medical helpers of neighboring departments, played cat and mouse with the police, overflowing it in part, to to follow Mrs. Buzyn in the corridors of emergencies, shouting to her slogans: "Means for the hospital!", "The hospital is not for sale!", "Hospital in anger".
After a visit of nearly two hours, the minister was exfiltrated by a rear exit of the hospital, AFP found.
Earlier, she reminded representatives of strikers, and the press, of the emergency measures announced in June "to help (emergency services) this summer to recruit staff", and "risk premiums" as early as July as well as a "premium of cooperation" with doctors for nurses "saving waiting time in emergencies".
"And then there is a budget dedicated to the rehabilitation of a number of emergency services, many are too small, as is the case of La Rochelle, because they were built 20 years ago when there It was half the time, many are old and need to be enlarged, (...) organization to work better ". This budget dedicated to the renovation of emergencies "is already proposed to the institutions" she stressed.
Echoing the minister who spoke of a lack of beds "downstream", "beds of follow-up care and rehabilitation, or beds in Ephad", in order to fluidify urgencies, one of the demonstrators, Pascal Gaudin, secretary FO of the group Hospitaller Rochelais estimated that "200,000 more positions in the Ehpad, 100,000 more in health facilities".
© 2019 AFP