Paris (AFP)

After nine months of crisis in the public hospital, doctors, caregivers and even interns are once again called to mobilize everywhere in France on Tuesday to demand more resources and staff and "remain visible", despite the actions planned for the same day against pension reform.

In Paris, a procession must leave at midday from the Lariboisière hospital (10th arrondissement) towards République to allow those who wish to join the planned demonstration from République to Nation against the future "universal system" of retirement , where a "white square" will be dedicated to caregivers, according to Mireille Stivala (CGT).

But "we are aware that it will be complicated" to mobilize exhausted staff and sometimes faced for more than a week with travel difficulties due to the strike in transport, explains Dr Anne Gervais, co-founder of the collective Inter-Hôpitaux (CIH), with little hope of repeating the success of November 14.

Several thousand hospital workers then paraded all over France - including 10,000 in Paris, according to the organizers, 7,500, according to the police - to denounce their working conditions and demand an "emergency plan".

More than one in four hospital doctors and more than one in ten paramedical workers had also declared a strike, at the call of the Inter-Hospital and Inter-Emergency groups joined by practitioner organizations and CGT, FO unions , CFDT, CFTC, CFE-CGC, SUD, Unsa.

A week later, the government unveiled its plan to restore "oxygen" and "attractiveness" to the hospital: budget extension of 1.5 billion euros and recovery of 10 billion euros of debt spread over three years, bonuses for staff ... Without appeasing protesters.

Similarly, the announcements of the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn in June and September, estimated at 750 million euros over three years, did not prevent the extension to the whole hospital of the unprecedented strike of emergencies started in March, which still affected 268 services on December 1.

Doubling of the budget allocated to health, general salary increase, immediate recruitments and opening of additional beds ... The demands have not changed. The ranks of the discontented, them, did not cease swelling.

The main internal union (Isni), which calls to join the demonstration, launched an unlimited strike on December 10 to denounce the "degradation of care" and to demand better conditions of training and remuneration.

In a press release, the union calls for a national demonstration in Paris on Monday, January 20.

- "Nothing has changed" -

Unlike the unions (CGT, FO, etc.) opposed to the pension reform, the Inter-Hôpitaux collective refuses to take up the subject "because it is not their role", justifies Anne Gervais.

But caregivers would be "right" to rebel against an extension of their working time, she said.

For its part, the government promises in particular to take better account of night work to allow a quarter of nurses and nursing assistants in the public - who will eventually lose their right to depart from 57 years of age - to leave before 62 years , at best at 60, but these announcements "must be clarified", according to Mireille Stivala.

Sunday, 660 hospital doctors threatened to resign to "force the government to open a Grenelle public hospital with a real plan funded to meet the needs", in a column in the Journal du Dimanche.

This new mobilization comes after a crisis in the Ile-de-France pediatric services, marked by the transfer this fall of 22 infants in the provinces, for lack of beds and sufficient staff in intensive care, in the middle of a bronchiolitis epidemic, according to Professor Stéphane Dauger (CIH).

"In thirty years we had never transferred more than three children" over such a period, indignant the pediatrician.

For Orianne Plumet, nurse of the group Inter-Urgences, other "alarming situations" are to be feared with the winter epidemics, especially in the emergency room, "where nothing has changed".

To protest against the lack of resources planned for the establishment of the "access to care service" (SAS) promised for the summer of 2020, the first union of liberal generalists, MG France, for its part called to close the cabinets on Saturday.

© 2019 AFP