José Bové était présent au banquet des luttes. Midi libre – J.-M. C.
Former MEP José Bové supports the Manifesto for the Defense of Hospitals and the Emile-Borel Collective of Saint-Affrique.
The Manifesto for the Defense of Hospitals and Maternity Units in South Aveyron and the Émile-Borel Collective organized a banquet of struggle on Friday, January 17 in front of the hospital center to put pressure on the maintenance of current services while waiting for the opening of the future joint hospital. Among the supporters of this cause, José Bové was present. The opportunity for him to meet up with former comrades in struggle from Larzac:“I came because I follow, through the press releases, everything that is happening, whether in Millau or in Saint-Affrique, in terms of the future of the hospital. The situation in Saint-Affrique is getting worse. Month after month, year after year, it is getting worse and worse. Today, doctors are even encouraged to leave, they are almost being chased away. The building is deteriorating. Nothing is being done to maintain momentum, even until the construction and implementation of the medium-sized hospital. The debate today is no longer even about whether we are for or against the medium-sized hospital, it is about whether there will still be care, whether the services will be open until the time when there is the medium-sized hospital. And on this, contrary to what some people must have thought in the administrations, and I am thinking of the ARS in particular, this is unanimous among the population, the union organizations, the political forces, the current mayor, the former mayor, etc.”
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For José Bové, there is now a consensus to say “stop this destruction, stop the fact that tomorrow we will have a hospital that will be closed, where there will be a few rickety walls, where the rooms will not be at all suitable. In short, nothing more will happen. And so obviously we chase doctors, then we chase patients since we can no longer get treatment and so on. We will have an empty shell instead. That is not possible. When I saw that the initiatives were expanding, by talking with people from the collectives here, I said yes, it is important to come and mark the moment.”
“This is not a fight for today”
José Bové then evokes the fight waged twenty years ago concerning the maintenance of the maternity ward and the creation in 2004 in Saint-Affrique of the national coordination for the defense of local hospitals and maternity wards: “It had already started before, here, at the hospital, in the mid-1990s. This is not a fight just for today. It is a story that has been going on for a long time and that it is important to recall to show that there has always been this will and a dynamic of users, medical staff, elected officials, to keep this hospital.” The former MEP concludes: “And then, defending a hospital anyway, damn it, this should be the ABC. It has always been said that there is no country without a farmer, but there is no territory without a hospital. A rural world where there is no longer a hospital is a rural world that is dead, where we are leaving. It is not possible.”
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