Last chance to convince Agnès Buzyn. The health minister is due to announce a series of measures on Monday (September 9th) to convince the emergency services to end their social movement, which has been going on for almost six months. The week will be decisive as a general meeting of strikers will take place Tuesday and a demonstration at the call of the CGT Wednesday.

To great ills, great remedies ? After two shy series of announcements, mid-June then beginning of September, Agnes Buzyn will present another "action plan" for the "refoundation of emergencies", inspired by the proposals of the deputy (LREM) of Charente, Thomas Mesnier, and the Chief of the Samu de Paris, Pierre Carli.

The minister promised Sunday "a dedicated budget to resolve the crisis" in progress in half of the public emergency services. Better yet: "I will put money into long-term, restructuring solutions that will solve the emergency problem in the long term," she said.

According to the Sunday Journal, "three shock measures are in preparation", with "bed reopenings", a "tariff reform" and a "single phone number" for medical relief.

The first of this plan will be reserved for the representatives of hospital staff and directors, whom Agnès Buzyn will receive at 3 pm, as well as the unions of liberal doctors and the Inter-Urgences collective, at the origin of this unprecedented social movement.

249 hospitals on strike

According to this association of paramedics, 249 sites were on strike Friday - while continuing to provide care. For its part, the ministry had counted 195 mid-August, the only score made public to date. If this number sounds like a recognition of the scale of the crisis started in mid-March, it also says the insufficiency of the first answers made before the summer.

Despite the monthly bonus of 100 euros net paid in July and the 15 million euros released to recruit seasonal reinforcements, the grumbling has continued to expand.

"The bonus Buzyn had the opposite effect of that expected: it showed that it was possible," says Hugo Huon, president of the collective Inter-Emergency, in an interview in the Journal du dimanche.

In the field, "people have rabies, they are desperate," said this nurse at Lariboisière Hospital in Paris.

Obliged to review its dosage, Agnès Buzyn has unveiled earlier this week a second salvo of measures "feedbacks", such as "direct admission" of the elderly without going through emergencies, the "video-assistance" between the Ehpad and the regulators of Samu, or the sending of an ambulance to a liberal doctor for the less serious cases.

To relieve emergencies, I asked that all hospitals sign agreements with long-term care homes so that seniors can access geriatric services directly without going through the emergency door. @France Inter

Agnès Buzyn (@agnesbuzyn) September 8, 2019

A panoply supposed to limit the influx of patients in services already saturated, whose attendance has more than doubled in twenty years, reaching 21.4 million passages in 2017.

But the minister has not quantified the cost of her promises, nor satisfied the demands of the strikers, who demand more posts and beds in hospitals.

The "action plan" to be detailed on Monday will therefore look like a last chance plan to get out of the conflict.

A series of actions already planned in the week

Especially since the "national general assembly" of the collective Inter-Emergency will be held Tuesday from 12 pm in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), in particular to define "a calendar of action".

"We think about new sick leaves grouped," warns Mr. Huon, who believes that without this type of electroshock in the spring, Agnès Buzyn "would not move".

Now, "it would have to put a lot of money on the table, that Bercy opens the floodgates," he adds.

The event received the support of several unions and hospital doctors' associations, inviting practitioners "to join the mobilization" to "end the budget restrictions for the public hospital".

A slogan similar to that of the CGT, which has been trying for months to expand the movement to the entire health and social sector, including psychiatry and the Ehpad.

His call for a "big day of national action" on Wednesday, with a Paris demonstration at 13 H from the place of Italy to the Ministry of Health, however did not find an echo among the other unions.

With AFP