By Antoine Sauvetre
Published on 2 Jan 21 at 17:30
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It is the symbol of the fight against coronavirus pandemic in the country ofAlençon (Orne). The hospital, like its peers, faced the epidemic of Covid-19 during the whole year 2020, despite limited human and financial resources.
The largest hospital in the department is often presented as a “small field hospital” with often dilapidated infrastructure.
Its director, Jérôme Le Brière, nursing staff but also the technical and logistical services have nevertheless demonstrated throughout the year their ability to cope.
Innovation and anticipation
Reception center for Covid patients from the start of theepidemic, the Alençonnais establishment has been able to innovate, as with the provision of oximeters for patients to measure their oxygen level at home.
Above all, he had to reorganize all of his services, but also circulation and patient care. “Everything is thought out Covid and non-Covid”, then commented Cyrielle Baranzini, referent for exceptional health situations at Chicam (Center hospitalier intercommunal Alençon-Mamers).
To accommodate the ever-increasing number of coronavirus patients, the hospital has even “pushed its walls” by installing an advanced medical station under its new intensive care unit.
Until exhaustion
The teams also had some tough choices to make : postpone certain treatments to free up beds and time in the planning of caregivers.
For some, “the Covid is the straw that broke the camel’s back”. The teams, tired and anxious by the risks this new virus represented for them and their families, held out during the first wave.
Continuous wave
The pressure never eased. Between two epidemic waves, there was that of postponed care. “For us, it’s like a second wave but without the Covid,” said Pascal Lamarche, secretary general of the USD61-CGT.
“The intensive care unit had only three Covid patients, but it still reached its maximum capacity” at the end of May, assured the union representative during a day of mobilization so that “the day according to is not a return to the abnormal ”in the hospital environment.
Exhausted, the staff prepared to face the inevitable second wave in the fall. A second wave which will prove to be more virulent and especially more deadly in the Orne.
“All the departments are full,” Jérôme Le Brière announced at the beginning of December, when the Alençon hospital was supposed to operate with 20 % of its staff less due to stoppages.
And the battle is not yet won. While “did not see the end of the tunnel of this second wave”, the hospital will, from the beginning of the year 2021, organize the vaccination campaign while facing a possible third wave after the end of the holiday season. ‘year.
“Alençon deserves a new hospital,” said one of its surgeons in the Orne weekly on 23 December. The work of its teams since the start of the crisis is just one more argument.
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