On official presentations, it is the hospital of all superlatives and all promises. That of the XXIe century. “The first medical and dental campus in Europe in size”, “Ambitious and innovative equipment”, which will be built for the next fifty years, will be able to cope with the next crises, adapt to the medicine of tomorrow, since it will, of course, be « agile » and « flexible ».
The future university hospital center (CHU) of Saint-Ouen Grand Paris Nord, the result of the merger of the current CHU Bichat and Beaujon, expected by 2028 north of the capital, would even succeed in the bet at 1.3 billion euros. euros to rebalance the particularly unequal healthcare supply in Ile-de-France. And the feat of bringing Seine-Saint-Denis out of its status as a medical desert.
” Beautiful “, “Of excellence”, for Saint-Ouen and the suburbs, applauds Karim Bouamrane, the socialist mayor of the host city, doped with American cinema and “Republican meritocracy”. He was a member of the jury of the competition which, on March 3, named the winner for the hospital, the group led by Renzo Piano, Pritzker Prize, the equivalent of the Nobel in architecture. Who says CHU, also says university. The 12,500 students announced, the research laboratories “Will necessarily play on the attractiveness of the territory”, adds Stéphane Troussel, the president of the department.
Bringing together the two sites “is like closing Beaujon”
The reception is much more reserved on the other side of the ring road, in the towers of Bichat, or, further west, in Clichy-la-Garenne, in the Hauts-de-Seine, where caregivers and doctors, Worn out by the pandemic and worried about its repercussions, see this real estate project as an extension of the cost reduction policy to which they are subject and from which the public hospital has suffered for years.
Of course, the debates first focused on bed closures. The first documents presented by the Assistance Publique des Hospitals de Paris (AP-HP), which is piloting its largest operation there since the opening of the Georges-Pompidou European Hospital twenty years ago, mentioned 389 medical beds, fewer surgery and obstetrics out of today’s 1,049. Bring two sites together in one “Therefore amounts to closing Beaujon”, summarizes Olivier Milleron, cardiologist in Bichat, who is active in the inter-hospital collective. The crisis due to Covid-19 has gone through this. The AP-HP obtained from Matignon the addition of some 90 beds and an additional borrowing authorization of 70 million euros.
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