MEDICAL DESERT, THE SITUATION GETS BETTER
Medical desertification has accelerated in France and could further deteriorate if measures are not taken, warns a study released on Tuesday by the Association of Mayors of France (AMF) and the French Mutuality. As a reminder, this term designates “an area where the inhabitants can on average only benefit from 2.5 consultations of general medicine per year”.
“The offer (of care) is poorly distributed over the territory and it is inexorably retracting”, notes Séverine Salgado, health director at the Mutualité Française. “The direct consequence is that 11.1% of French people lived in a medical desert” in 2019, the year covered by the study, i.e. 7.4 million French people against 5.7 million in 2016 (8.6% ).
These figures are greater than those of official statistics (Drees) which estimated in February at 3.8 million people the number of French people living in a medical desert in 2018, or 5.7% of the population.
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