It took eight months of strike to hear the distress of hospital staff. "The situation is even worse than the one we analyzed," admitted Emmanuel Macron. While several thousand heads of service, doctors, nurses, aides and interns were demonstrating everywhere in France last Thursday, the head of state promised "strong decisions" for the hospital.

Within three weeks of an indefinite strike against his pension reform, the President of the Republic said he "heard the anger and indignation" of the hospital. However, he does not intend to modify his prescription: the "My Health 2022" plan, which he himself presented in September 2018, "goes in the right direction but does not go fast enough", he said. said.

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He therefore called on the government to "accelerate" to "invest more heavily". Announcements by Health Minister Agnès Buzyn in June and September, amounting to 750 million euros over three years, were not enough to end the unprecedented emergency strike that began in March. At the top of the demands: higher wages, more staff and no more bed closures.

"Revalorization of wages"

Starting from the capital, the movement spread throughout France with 268 establishments affected at the end of last week. This conflict, which initially concerned only caregivers, coagulated all the discontent of the hospital and federated all the unions. Even doctors eventually joined in September in another group Inter-Hospitals, which calls for a new demonstration on November 30, ten days before an indefinite strike of interns.

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Agnès Buzyn ended up revising her priorities, promising a "support plan" focused on "the attractiveness of the hospital" with "the upgrading of wages, especially early in the career", to stem the flight of staff. To achieve this, unions and collectives demand an increase of at least 4% in the hospital budget; when the budget of the Secu for 2020 provides only slightly more than 2%, or 84.2 billion for public and private institutions.

Other avenues are under consideration, including a total or partial recovery of the colossal debt of hospitals (about 30 billion euros) by the state to lower interest rates. Bercy, who initially said that this option was "not envisaged", put water in his wine: "everything is open," said Sunday the Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire.

With AFP