–
Photo Credit: Red Photo Library / JMB
Article from the NPA Health and Social Security Commission originally published on the NPA website: here
At the start of the year, the wave of the epidemic is rising, slower but more deadly than the first. The second containment did not prevent contamination from being maintained at a high level. The cold and wet period, the appearance of a new more contagious strain in the United Kingdom which is spreading in Europe, the family reunions at the end of the year predict an acceleration of the circulation of the virus in the coming weeks.
In several regions, hospital services are again overwhelmed or close to saturation. Power is once again unable to cope. It is always the same who pay the heaviest price: the elderly, health workers, the most exposed employees.
Confinements and curfews less and less tolerated and effective
Unable to act on the health plan, Macron, Castex, Véran only know how to do one thing: press the buttons “confinement / deconfinement”, “curfew”, “certificates”, “sanctions”, “closures of the premises. of leisure and culture ”. Accepted in the spring, as a stopgap, these measures become unbearable over time, and less and less effective.
The slow vaccination champions!
While vaccines, whose effectiveness has been widely demonstrated, begin to be available and provide a glimpse of the way out of the tunnel, power is at the top of the podium for the slowness of vaccination. Once again Macron speaks, but “stewardship” does not follow. The denunciation of “bureaucracy” has a good back. The reality is that by dint of destroying the public service, of relying on “agencies” or associations without means or on private actors like the American cabinet “Mc Kinsay” it is confusion and impotence. What the slowness of vaccination reveals is the inability of this government to convince of its necessity and to impose decisions in an authoritarian manner and without discussing them with the population.
For health, it’s always austerity
In the hospital, in the EHPAD the great promises for the health system, have been forgotten. Colleagues, tired and sickened, leave. They are not replaced. Austerity budgets, the lack of significant recruitment, restructuring accompanied by bed and service closures continue. The hospital remains in the hands of managers to tighten the screws of austerity and impose the “management” of the private sector. Far from changing course, the executive is continuing in the same direction.
Act collectively
It is impossible to count on those who govern us to make the right decisions, provide the hospital with the means, protect themselves, speed up vaccination. The only effective way out of the health and social crisis is that of collective action, and mobilization, it is to take our affairs in hand and to mobilize together to impose OUR solutions:
resources for the hospital;
barrier actions, the rapid search for contaminated people and their isolation, implemented with the population;
A safe and well-organized immunization system.
There is no other way to do this than to resume the path of mobilization, starting from the proposed dates such as January 21 when unions and collectives in the health and social sector call for a united day of action, and to act in common with other sectors of society victims of the crisis, against layoffs, business closures, insecurity, attacks on our freedoms in the name of “health emergency”.
It is together and in solidarity that we will emerge from this crisis.
–
