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Depopulated emergencies, deserted offices… Doctors fear a “second health crisis”


An empty waiting room of a Marseille general practitioner during the coronavirus epidemic – Jean Saint-Marc / 20 Minutes

  • Marseille hospitals and health professionals are worried that the Provencals no longer consult a doctor for fear of contracting the coronavirus.
  • They therefore joined forces to launch a joint communication campaign aimed at stemming the phenomenon.
  • Health professionals fear that they will have to take care of serious cases of certain pathologies treated too late, and thus face a second health crisis.

Where did the patients who screened for colon cancer every day go
hospitals? Where are the dozens of diabetics who usually have their health conditions checked regularly by their family doctors? The pandemic of
coronavirus has given birth to a new and particularly dangerous phenomenon: the French, suffering from various pathologies other than coronavirus, no longer seek treatment. Doctors’ offices and hospitals are emptied of their usual occupants, especially those with chronic illnesses who, in normal times, come to consult at the first symptom.

In Marseilles, for example, the Timone’s emergencies record only 110 to 120 passages per day, against 250 usually, according to the direction of the Public Assistance of the City Hospitals (AP-HM), the third CHU in France. As for liberal doctors, the drop in activity is drastic, according to Laurent Saccomano, president for liberal doctors of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regional union of health professionals. The latter refers in particular to a drop in attendance of 50% among generalists and from 70 to 80% among certain specialists.

Fear of a “second health crisis”

A sufficiently worrying situation in the second city of France for the AP-HM and the liberal doctors of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur regional union of health professionals to decide to launch a large joint communication campaign on Tuesday . The objective is clear: to encourage Provencals to consult a doctor as soon as necessary. Without this, a real threat would hang over the country: that of “a second health crisis, in addition to that of the Covid-19”, in the words of Dominique Rossi, president of the medical commission of the AP-HM.

“We fear what we have seen in Italian studies,” he explains. They were completely drowned by the epidemic and there was a second health crisis, with patients arriving with completely outdated pathologies, because there was a huge delay in treatment! “We are particularly concerned with silent illnesses, cancers and heart problems,” says Jean-Olivier Arnaud, director general of the AP-HM.

Fear of being contaminated

“Patients have two fears, analyzes Dominique Rossi. They are initially afraid of disturbing the caregivers. They say to themselves that with the epidemic, the doctors and the Samu have other things to do than to take care of them. And they are also afraid of being infected. “

But how do you calm these fears when you know the shortage of masks and other gowns to avoid any spread from which caregivers suffer? Aware of the phenomenon that they admit themselves, these Marseilles doctors claim, however, to have adapted care to limit the risks.

Professionals try to reassure

“By the end of the week, a circuit will be operational for outpatients, with the supply of a mask, hydroalcoholic gel available and of course guaranteed social distancing,” said Jean-Olivier Arnaud. And hammer: “These patients who remain silent, they must be woken up, they are not in danger by going to the AP-HM or by going to see their doctor! “You have to be confined, except for what concerns health”, repeats Laurent Saccomano.

On the other hand, the latter invites you to favor a first contact with a distant doctor, before going to the office or to the emergency room. An instruction that follows the national trend: in just one week, between March 23 and 29, the first days of confinement, 486,369 teleconsultations were billed to Health Insurance, which recorded less than 10,000 per week before start March.

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