An outdated health administration, prefects "relegated to the background", a saturated emergency number: the National Federation of Firefighters denounces in a report to vitriol the management of the coronavirus epidemic.

Revealed Saturday July 4 by Le Parisien, this document intended for the Ministry of the Interior "is not finalized and should not leak in the press", regretted with AFP the colonel Hugues Deregnaucourt, vice-president of the Federation.

The organization, which represents the 247,000 firefighters in France, however assumes the criticisms made in this particularly scathing document vis-à-vis the Ministry of Health and its Regional Health Agencies (ARS).

"The prefects have been blind for a very long time, no information was sent down by the ARS regional delegates," said Hugues Deregnaucourt.

"Crisis management is a job, we don't leave it to administrative and financial directors," he said, assuring that, in many departments, "we really paid attention not to use the firefighters."

"Jamming of strategic decisions"

The management of the epidemic is curtailed by the report, which denounces a "crisis (...) of communication leadership" according to Le Parisien. "To be effective, managing a major crisis must mobilize a single director, a single operations commander and technical advisers," the document said.

In the future, "Why not create a ministry of civil protection, as some countries do?" Pleads Hugues Deregnaucourt.

According to the report, "the role of crisis commander has been given to technical advisers", which has caused "silos in the administrations, a blurring of strategic decisions."

At the controls, the ARS had "accounting and financial management of the health system" and were "in no way prepared for the management of emergency situations. They seemed to be monopolized by the management of the number of places in hospital resuscitation and by the statistical feedback, "writes the Federation.

Without dialogue with the ARS, "the prefects have been relegated to the background," according to the document. As a consequence, "the oblivion of the Ehpad, leaving only the local authorities facing the deaths in number of our elders".

The report also estimates that the hundreds of evacuations of patients in TGV or in helicopter, conceived to unclog the hospitals, were "pure operations of communication" and a "true blush". "Was it effective to make victims walk hundreds of kilometers, when often there was room in the clinic opposite?", Quotes Le Parisien.

The document also denounces the saturation of the 15th, regulated by the Samu, with waiting times of around forty minutes in certain regions.

With AFP

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