Winter viruses: congested emergencies in Brussels, turn first to a general practitioner

The problem, as Dr Didier Delmarcelle, head of the emergency department at Cliniques Saint-Jean in central Brussels, points out, is that many people “do not have a general practitioner in the Brussels region“. There is also a problem of availability because the general practitioners are quite overloaded. And then, “there is also a societal notion of urgency. People increasingly have a sense of urgency, of wanting to be heard quickly, rightly or wrongly.“.

However, having an attending physician is a key element in centralizing care since he knows the patient’s medical file very well. When we come to the emergency room, you have access to a doctor who is seeing you for the first time.