At the end of 2021, to respond to the problem of medical desertification, the Department decided to recruit 20 doctors whom it would employ 35 hours a week. The first doctor was expected in the fall of 2022, but it is long overdue.
“La Fabrique des centers de santé, which accompanies us, warned us that it would take six to seven months for the doctors to come forward”, explains Fabien Bazin, president of the departmental council of Nièvre. “The whole thing is to sign with the first to trigger a dynamic”.
A new hospital soon
On this point, he is rather optimistic. “We have three active contacts: a doctor who will arrive fairly quickly, but is heading more towards the hospital center, which could make it possible to reopen a medical service in a peripheral site.
A woman, who would come as a salaried general practitioner, her arrival is scheduled for May. “And a Moroccan doctor, whom we support in his request for equivalence.”
After five years of administrative procedures, a Colombian doctor settles in Alligny-Cosne
Within the next six months, he intends to go, with his teams, to Romania, to meet French medical students, to convince them to practice in Nièvre.
Five other foreign doctors have also come forward and wish to practice in France. But it’s very complicated, the administration is very slow on this kind of file, it’s not at all prototyped”, he regrets, given the urgency of the situation.
We will also work with the mayor of Clermont-Ferrand to meet interns in a privileged way, as well as with a dean of a faculty in Paris.
Last lever, the director of the health center, who has been recruited and will start on February 1. He was director of a health center in Grenoble, and the Department relies on his networks.
Three centers open by the end of June?
He hopes to open three health centers within six months. At the Machine, where the premises are already ready to welcome the future doctor. In the Morvan, but the town has not yet been revealed. And in Varennes-Vauzelles, where he joined forces with Olivier Sicot who already has a municipal project for a salaried doctor. Job offers have not yet been posted for this municipality.
A health center in Varennes-Vauzelles in the first half of 2023
But Fabien Bazin wants to be careful about the dates and recognizes: “You have to be humble, the competition between territories is tough, and young doctors have a lot of choice where to settle, even as employees. It’s less fluid than it was. You have to turn to over-endowed departments, but they are rare. It also relies on students whose Department finances a scholarship in return for settling in, and who are gradually settling in the territory.
All our articles on health in Nièvre
Marlene Martin