lThe Paralympic Games continue the success of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. A month of sport and celebration, after which it will be time to take stock. But before the Games close the political truce and the pre-game debates resume, let us dare to make a first assessment for the public hospital. In Paris and Marseille, where the sailing and football events took place, and in all the host cities, the teams from public hospitals did not make it onto any podium. However, they deserve great recognition.
First, they did what everyone saw, welcoming all patients in the middle of summer, including tourists, in the best conditions. In any case, public hospitals in our country remain the resource of our citizens for almost everything: emergencies, pediatrics, rare diseases or cancer. If France does not become a medical desert every summer, hospital teams are often on call.
The hospital teams also provided exemplary care to the Olympic family, to the athletes and to members of the delegations from around the world. They contributed to giving the image of a modern country, with an efficient health system, a wealth of medical expertise and the beautiful values of openness and hospitality of the French-style public service.
Main response to health needs
Our hospitals had finally been organised and prepared for several months for the risk of a mass influx of victims in the event of an attack, a movement of crowds, a cyber attack or other. Exercises were carried out with other public security and emergency services, notably in the port of Marseille. During the Games, teams were prepared in the SAMU crisis room, open every morning “just in case”, in the emergency room and in the operating theatres. France’s credibility in organising these major sporting events is also due to this capacity for anticipation and crisis management.
But after these Games, we are once again struck by the contrast between the excellence of our public hospitals, the praise we often hear from patients and this time from the organisers of the Marseille Games, and these recurring speeches from a public hospital on the edge of the abyss.
While it is true that certain public hospitals lack, for example, doctors on call, the mechanics of both politics and the media transform any difficulty, greater or lesser in one region or another, into a generality that too often prevails as a whole. This gives rise to opinions without discernment or nuances about public hospitals, even leading to theorizing about the bankruptcy of our health system.
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