Avignon (AFP)

"We are worn out, we are constantly being told about numbers, but we are patients we have in front of us": at Avignon hospital, the staff has been on strike for 7 months to denounce the lack means.

"We have the impression that we are no longer doing what we had chosen for this job: taking care of people. Today the hospital is a car park where patients are housed," sighs Yannick Le Toulec, nursing assistant.

New sign of discomfort in the hospital world, more than a thousand doctors must symbolically submit their resignation on Tuesday.

In the brand new hall of the Henri Duffaut Hospital Center, there are no banners with flashy slogans about the raging anger. Only black T-shirts crossed out with the inscription "On strike" under the white coats testify to the staff's exasperation.

"We are on an indefinite strike, we will hold out until we have won our case, even if it is hard," warns the assigned staff. At the origin of the movement, on June 2, the adult emergency service went on strike at the call of the national collective Inter-Urgences, like 267 services still in France today.

In Avignon, the strike has since spread to six other services.

"Very quickly, we realized that we were almost all facing the same problems", testify the paramedics, supported by an inter-union CGT-FO-CFDT. "Lack of beds, staff and equipment", list the strikers of this "reference" hospital in Vaucluse, located in one of the poorest cities in France and responsible for covering the needs of some 600,000 inhabitants.

Indebted to the tune of 37 million euros since 2007 and activity pricing, the center is facing its third contract to return to financial equilibrium (Cref) in 10 years. The latter provides for the abolition of 95 positions over two years "by optimizing the organization, in particular transfers between departments", argues the management.

- "Patching" -

"Not to move is to accept to be even more in deficit. It is necessary to reconcile the present and the future, if I do not do that, the banks will not lend any more and we will not be able to invest", defends Jean- Noël Jacques, the hospital director.

In the eyes of the staff, the equation is impossible to solve, even as the establishment built in the early 1980s continues to expand to accommodate the growing influx of patients.

"We have brought together two departments and added a specialty by cutting staff: we have gone from 12 to 14 patients per nurse and nursing assistant to 16 or even 18", underlines Yannick Le Toullec, for four years in the orthopedics-trauma and ophthalmology department .

"We no longer have time to take care of them properly when they are people who have broken bones and depend very much on us," said the 40-something man. During the holidays, he reports, five of his colleagues were on sick leave, including one who was burned out.

"We cannot bear to see elderly people waiting 15 or 16 hours a day on a stretcher in the corridors for lack of available beds downstream", adds Emmanuel Martin, nurse in the emergency room.

Nursing nurse, Françoise also went on strike for the first time in her career, scalded by broken promises. "We were told that when we exceed 3,000 births per year we would have one more position. As a result, in 2019, with 3,159 newborns, we had one less position," plague the nurse.

"We do not have the impression that our suffering is heard. We are constantly patching up with staff who do not stay and are replaced by fixed-term contracts, young people out of schools left alone in the night services who are unattractive, "adds Laurence, a pediatric emergency nurse.

"We are not a CAC 40 company. To believe that we want to break the public hospital", laments Christophe Del Rey, FO representative.

Farid, who takes the air outside, a drip hanging on his arm, plagues him against carers constantly pressed, who one day forgot to serve him his meal tray. At night, he complains, they sometimes take 20 minutes to come see him when he calls them.

© 2020 AFP