The Minister of Health announced developments on Saturday in Annemasse, Haute-Savoie, including tougher sentences.
The Minister of Health, Yannick Neuder, hammered it home on Saturday like a mantra during his visit to the private Hôpital Pays de Savoie in Annemasse (Haute-Savoie), still in shock after the assault on several caregivers in the emergency room on Wednesday evening: “There will be zero tolerance” on this subject.
“In a meeting with Gérald Darmanin (Minister of Justice, Editor's note) and Bruno Retailleau (Minister of the Interior, Editor's note), we clearly want to display this zero tolerance towards attacks in general on those in public authority, but particularly on caregivers”, explained Yannick Neuder, upon his arrival at the end of the morning.
“It's intolerable”
“It is a double message that I bring today: firstly, caregivers are particularly exposed during this flu period, and in general, because the tension on the health system in France is unfortunately very much there. But it is intolerable. And there are a certain number of measures that we want to strengthen very quickly.”
The government intends firstly to strengthen the penalties in such cases. He also wants to be able to “count all attacks on caregivers. Whether in hospital facilities or in the community, all caregivers are exposed”, recalled Yannick Neuder.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000Another avenue being explored by the executive is that of “being able to replace the filing of a complaint by the establishment so that there are no reprisals against the caregivers themselves, their family, their children, their parents, by anonymizing the filing of the complaint in the name of the health establishment”.
But caregivers expect more. “We hope that after what happened, we can have a change in our hospital and in the others, explains Kimberly Seco Cordero, secretary of the emergency department on site, on France 3. We are asking to have security personnel in the emergency department at all times, someone who can act to have more security in our department.”
65 every day
Among the fourteen personnel who faced the violence of the alleged attackers, two brothers, all the victims are “in a state of psychological shock”, the establishment indicates, and six suffer from “swellings in the face” and sometimes “a cracked rib, a trauma to an ankle or a broken hand”.
The minister then went to the Alpes-Léman hospital in Contamine-sur-Arve, also in Haute-Savoie, on Saturday to discuss the same subject. According to data released a year ago by the government, every day, on average, 65 health professionals are victims of physical or verbal attacks in France.
A scourge also in Occitanie
No fewer than 147 caregivers reported cases of violence in 2023 in the Occitanie region, compared to 104 in 2022 (+41%), according to the Order of Physicians. “If we had to retain the four main reasons for the violence, explains Stéphane Grill, general secretary of the Order of Physicians for the department of Haute-Garonne, quoted on November 24 by our colleagues at France Bleu/Ici, this is a reproach relating to coverage in nearly 40% of cases, a refusal to prescribe, whether it be a medication or a work stoppage, in nearly 20% of cases, falsification of documents in nearly 10% of cases and a waiting time deemed excessive in 10% of cases as well.”