Against the backdrop of an unprecedented crisis in the public hospital, the senior official at the head since 2013 of this juggernaut of the health system which employs more than 100,000 people and operates 38 hospitals, will leave his post as director general at the end of the month.
Changes called
In his letter, Martin Hirsch salutes the courage and selflessness of AP-HP staff in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic but regrets not having been able to implement “a hospital model different from what he has been before, closer to all of our expectations and ambitions”, a commitment he had kept at the dawn of the pandemic.
“It was because I thought that I could not meet all the conditions for this commitment to be respected that I decided, a month ago, to hand over my position as Director General of the AP-HP to the disposal of the government,” he wrote.
“I am convinced that many of the ills from which we suffer call for changes of the same magnitude as those which were made in 1958”, he added while the health system, and the public hospital in particular, is the one of the two major projects of Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term.
Aged 58, Martin Hirsch is an atypical personality in the world of French elites, long stamped on the left but a member of Nicolas Sarkozy’s government. Normalien, enarque, holder of a degree in neurobiology, State Councilor, he was president of Emmaüs France (2002-2007) before being High Commissioner for Active Solidarity against Poverty. He is at the origin active solidarity income (RSA).
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