Since yesterday, hospital workers, users, unions and elected officials have occupied the Hôtel-Dieu. In question, the decision of the AP-HP to redirect patients in medical emergency to another hospital.
“We really have the impression that we don’t give a damn about the caregivers and the sick. With the occupation of one of the rooms of the Hôtel-Dieu since yesterday, it is clearly an additional level that has been crossed in our mobilization. “ Contacted by why actorhe Dr Gérald Kierzek, former head of Smur at Hôtel-Dieu, does not hide his anger. Removed from his post last July by the management of the AP-HP, the latter occupies, with about thirty staff, users and elected officials, a room of the Hôtel-Dieu with the aim of denouncing the scheduled dismantling of the emergency department of this hospital.
In this case, the closure of this emergency service was initially scheduled for November 4. For two years, it has caused the discontent of part of the medical team as well as many politicians. The Hôtel Dieu is, it is true, at the heart of a vast modernization project, which plans to make it “the hospital of the 21st century”. In other words, a hospital without a bed, but with medicine focused on prevention, screening and health education. A “low-cost” establishment, comment its detractors. Dr Gérald Kierzek had also presented an alternative project.
But this time around, the trigger for such action is a sudden and unexpected decision by the AP-HP leadership. The latter has just given the instruction from Tuesday to re-route patients elsewhere than to the Emergency Department of Hôtel-Dieu. A decision which obviously led to the anger and incomprehension of some of the staff because on July 10, Marisol Touraine had finally announced his decision to no longer close the emergency room.
Listen to Dr Gérald Kierzek, ex-manager of the Smur of the Hôtel-Dieu, dismissed from his post: ” The reality is that the Assistance Publique continues to empty, siphon, and asphix the nursing staff of the Hôtel-Dieu, to the contempt of the patients. …. “
The defense committee of the threatened hospital, “Hôtel-Dieu, Hôpital pour tous”, is not yet at its first stroke. Opposed from the start to the restructuring of the hospital, the committee had already last August blocked the move of internal medicine beds from Hôtel-Dieu to Cochin hospital. For Gérald Kierzek, closing the emergencies would create a wave of panic in the organization of emergency services in the capital. Located in the center of Paris, the patients would then be transferred to the SMUR of the Lariboisière Hospital which is already
saturated.
Finally, concerning the dilapidation of the premises, there again, “it is a lie of the public authorities”, affirms Gérald Kierzek. “The hospital has been partly renovated over the past few years, and we are in fact occupying a brand new room which is the symbol of this refurbished hospital. The truth is that the management of the AP-HP wants to close this hospital to create administrative offices, ”he concludes.
Listen to Dr Gérald Kierzek: ” OWe are going to transfer all these small people to Lariboisière which is not able to absorb all these patients. This hospital already has ten hours of waiting in its emergency department and receives 250 patients per day … “
.