In a column published in L’Obs on Monday November 18, doctors call on their colleagues to “play a major role in the detection and prevention of violence” against women within their couple.
In France, one in ten women has already been the victim of domestic violence. In France, a woman is raped every seven minutes. In France, a woman a woman dies under the blows of her partner or ex-partner every three days. “To identify and prevent domestic and sexual violence” far too present in the country, 65 doctors signed a column published Monday, November 18 on the website of The Obs. “We call on our sisters and brothers to play a major role in the detection and prevention of violence,” they write.
“In a recent survey by the Center Hubertine Auclert among healthcare professionals from 11 medical and psychological centres, the latter declare that they “never” or “rarely” receive women victims of violence. However, Doctor Marie Le Bars establishes in her thesis that a general practitioner receives in consultation, on an average of 25 patients per day, between 2 and 3 women victims of domestic violence. Professor Gilles Lazimi affirms that one out of 4 consulting patients has been the victim of violence during their lifetime”, first of all recall the signatories of this forum.
To identify women victims of domestic violence, there is however a screening test for domestic violence validated in French and usable in primary care, they recall. “Women victims of violence want us to ask them the question”, assures Marie Le Bars.
Make the doctor the resource person
“Research shows that this type of questionnaire promotes and frees speech. It even quadruples the number of detections! Systematic screening is the only way to detect violent situations, passed over in silence. If necessary, the doctor will then be able to provide adapted and versatile care such as access to information on the national management of domestic violence, inclusion in an adapted network and the organization of close follow-up”. continue the doctors.
And the latter to launch an appeal to recognize “the doctor as a resource person, the first resort of the woman victim” and that he seizes “systematically these screening tools” in which he would be trained. Finally, it would be necessary “that the ministries concerned (health, universities, women’s rights) finance coordinated support network systems associating professionals and associations, in particular to provide this training.”
“By detecting this violence, our doctors will contribute to better support women victims and better prevent violence; By thus being fully involved in care and prevention, we will be better able to support, guide and help these female victims and therefore contribute to their protection as well as that of their children!”, concludes the forum.
It is not a question of lifting medical secrecy
However, it is in no way a question of lifting medical secrecy. “The doctor must accompany the woman while respecting her choice, it is she who must lodge a complaint. Lifting medical confidentiality would break the bond of trust”explains Doctor Gilles Lazimi, general practitioner, associate professor of general medicine at Sorbonne-University and associative activist member of SOS Women 93 and the Feminist Collective against Rape at AFP.
These statements come at the very time that the Minister of Justice has just announced that she is in favor of the lifting of medical secrecy, “in particular to resolve situations in which the victim cannot go to court, and whether this is a possibility offered to the doctor”. “It is necessary to go beyond medical secrecy. It appeals to the ethics of the doctor: if he sees that a woman is being massacred, I would be shocked if he did not say so”she told the JDD Sunday November 17.
In 2018, 121 women died of domestic violence in France, according to the latest figures from the Delegation for Victims of the General Directorates of the Police and the Gendarmerie. For the year 2019, as of November 18, 131 women have died under the blows of their spouse.
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