It is a tragic story that reveals a more general problem. On the night of December 30 to 31, 2017, in the town of Montmeyan (around 570 inhabitants, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region), a 71-year-old man suffered a heart attack. His wife immediately calls 15 and the Samu contacts the firefighters of the city of Draguignan. Problem: they are already in intervention. The organization therefore falls back on the firefighters of Barjols, a town located about 15 km from Montmeyan.
Unfortunately, it takes about 1 hour 30 for help to get there. The man, despite a cardiac massage provided by his son, dies. Today, his wife, Martine Saglietto, denounces a waiting period that is far too long: “I do not know if the emergency services could have saved my husband, but because of this waiting period, he did not even had a chance to get by. Local firefighters only have an ambulance. It has already happened several times in Montmeyan ”.
“We are more likely to die here than elsewhere”
The widow wrote a letter to the President of the Republic and launched a written petition, which has already collected a hundred signatures in the surrounding villages. “If my misfortune happened, it is above all for lack of means. I wrote everywhere so that the outlying villages are better served by firefighters and Samu. It is a very beautiful village, but we are more likely to die here than elsewhere ”.
For Laurent Bécé, the person in charge of Samu in the Var, the delay of 1 hour 30 is however unlikely: “The time of the call, the time to enter the address, it is a few minutes. Then there is a 48-minute theoretical drive between the Draguignan hospital and the town of Montmeyan. He admits, however, that “Montmeyan is at the end of the world in terms of relief and health resources”.
Not surprisingly, the municipality of Montmeyan is located in a medical desert. And the situation is not getting better: according to the Departmental Council of the Order of Physicians of the Var, between 2019 and 2023, 419 general practitioners will cease their activity in this department.
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