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Paris (AFP) – One day an emergency doctor, always an emergency doctor: tossed “from one crisis to another” by his arrival at the Ministry of Health, François Braun still hopes, amidst strikes and epidemics, to switch to “basic treatments” and leave the sign.
The three-piece suit replaced the blouse. And the minister is gradually taking over the doctor. “Not the minister who will deny the difficulties” of carers who face “the trials that follow one another with courage and self-sacrifice”, he assured Friday during a press conference with alarmist accents.
But still the minister predicts that “things will get better in six months”. Bold prognosis launched at the end of November by those who, at the beginning of July, evoked a “breathless healthcare system”.
There is no time to breathe for Dr Braun. Appointed in early summer to treat yet another bout of fever in the emergency room, the placid practitioner endures the accumulation of calamities without batting an eye: unprecedented monkeypox, record-breaking bronchiolitis, early flu, etc. “There will be others, I have no illusions about this,” he said at the dawn of a new wave of autumnal Covid.
In addition to epidemics, computer viruses bring even the largest hospitals to their knees. Thus, Corbeil-Essonnes and Versailles, two local branches of Samu, returned to the paper age by hackers hungry for ransom. Visible face of the “daily attacks” which the minister deplores, stating each time that “the health of the French will not be taken hostage”.
“Convince and trust”
Difficult to reassure a population already often worried about the real or presumed but increasingly numerous drug shortage. While the fear of burnout affects essential products like acetaminophen and amoxicillin, it can only promise a return to normalcy “in the weeks, months ahead.”
As in the face of the revolt of overwhelmed pediatricians, which an extension of the budget should appease until the Assizes of child health announced for spring. The crisis management of the first months erected in politics, due to lack of time.
The interested party denies and wants to be “the minister of all treatments, not only of + damage containment +”, capable of carrying out “emergency care in parallel” and “basic care, the re-foundation of our system sanitary.
But he knows he is the head of a “ministry that has long been accustomed to passing from one crisis to another and which, in fact, has great difficulty in distancing itself to resolve the underlying problems”.
Nor is it easy to break free from Elyos supervision. When the mandatory mask returns to the debate, the minister advances (“my arm won’t shake”) then the president rephrases (“on a voluntary basis”). And the first moderates: “My method is to convince and trust the French”.
Flavor of fray
A priority mission, judging by the performance of the health component of the National Council for the Refoundation, launched well before those on education or “aging well”. It is no coincidence that the former emergency room doctor is overexposed in the media, while other recruits of “civil society” such as Pap Ndiaye (Education) or Jean-Christophe Combe (Solidarity) are rarer there.
The shadow of his predecessor Olivier Véran, however, is never far away, with the news punctually giving the government spokesman the opportunity to recall that he held the position. Less expert in communication, as in politics – he was surprised by “the inability to really be able to debate in the Assembly” – François Braun compensates by probing the field.
Wherever he goes, the former Metz emergency chief boasts his “toolbox”, made up of “rights and duties”. But speech does not calm all tensions. His first Social Security budget prompted strikes by interns and biologists. Liberal doctors followed suit, showing their anger at the ministry’s feet.
Unusual scene, François Braun went to meet them, even if it meant being disturbed by his colleagues. A taste of scrum specifically for the rugby fan, who “has always preferred percussion to shot-overflow”. The pillar must now avoid the rumbles.
© 2022 AFP
