Posted on 12/01/2003 4:00:09 PM PST by blam
Flu outbreak hits ailing French health sector
December 01 2003 at 03:12PM
Paris - The French government, criticised for reacting too slowly to a deadly August heatwave, has urged Paris hospitals to take swift emergency measures to fight an epidemic of flu and gastroenteritis.
More than half a million people in France, including many children, have contracted flu, gastroenteritis or bronchitis in recent weeks in an unusually early winter flu outbreak - and experts say the triple-epidemic has yet to reach its peak.
Media coverage of crowded hospital waiting rooms and off-duty staff being recalled to cope with the influx may even have exacerbated the crisis, by causing alarm and prompting more people to bypass local doctors and head straight to hospital.
"The health authorities have added beds and made staff come back to work. They are all scared stiff," said Patrick Pelloux, head of the emergency hospital doctors association Amuhf.
"We are in a permanent state of crisis, so as soon as there is a problem, the system explodes," he told daily Liberation.
The latest health sector crisis comes as France battles to plug a gaping hole in its health budget.
Pelloux, and others, have lashed out at the government for failing to improve hospital resources since the summer heatwave which killed 15 000 mainly elderly people.
The number of children being taken to emergency services last Friday was up by a third compared to last year, according to AP-HP, a grouping of 39 hospitals around the Paris region.
Hospitals in two suburban Paris regions, Val-de-Marne and Hauts-de-Seine, were operating the national emergency "Plan Blanc" (White Plan), meaning they can order holidaying or off-duty doctors and nurses back to work.
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