Health workers demonstrated in cities across France on Tuesday to demand higher pay and more staff for services stretched to breaking point, just days before the country votes in parliamentary elections, reports FRANCE 24.
Although recently re-elected, President Emmanuel Macron has ordered a probe into which emergency units need immediate help with people in the sector warning there is no time to lose.
“Not a single departement [county] is spared, our public hospitals are in the process of dying for lack of resources,” said Pierre Wach, head of the CGT union in eastern city Strasbourg.
Protests began at hospitals in the morning Tuesday and continued at the health ministry in Paris in the afternoon, where staff, some wearing white medical coats, brandished placards with messages such as “Hire more and pay us more, it’s urgent!”.
Casualty workers’ group Samu-Urgences de France found in a May survey that at least 120 accident and emergency departments nationwide had already cut back on work or were preparing to do so after years of Covid-19 strain.