Residents of this town of 8,000 people rallied against the closure of the local hospital emergency department in early April.
Some 2,000 people, according to the gendarmerie, demonstrated again this Saturday afternoon in Feurs (Loire) against the closure of the emergency department of the hospital in this city in early April.
This exceptional mobilization for a city of around 8,000 inhabitants constitutes “an excellent result for the camp of those who want to maintain this emergency service”, declared Dr Olivier Nicolas, president of the Defense and Support Committee of the Center hospital of Forez in Feurs, which has organized several demonstrations for a month.
Call to François Braun
At the end of this new mobilization, which lasted nearly three hours according to the gendarmerie, the practitioner explained that “the health security of an entire territory requires the reopening as soon as possible of the emergency service”, of the city .
Olivier Nicolas also invited the elected officials of the territory to request a meeting with the Minister of Health François Braun. For her part, Marianne Darfeuille, mayor of Feurs, demanded this week in a press release the reopening of emergencies in her city “as soon as the number of emergency workers will be reconstituted”.
Acting doctors
The director of the CHF, Edmond Mackowiak, justifies the closure of the service by the fact that “half of the 10 emergency doctors in Feurs are temporary workers who do not accept the ceiling on their remuneration imposed by the Rist law which came into force on 3 april”.
Faced with the fait accompli of this closure, an extraordinary supervisory board of the Center hospitalier du Forez, which has another establishment in Montbrison, had voted on the same April 3 “a motion providing for the return to four emergency lines – three in Montbrison and one in Feurs – as soon as the conditions for reopening are met, without opposition from the Regional Health Agency”, reported Claude Mondésert, health assistant for the city of Feurs and vice-president of the COS of the CHF.
