French hospitals have been asked to postpone non-urgent operations as a brutal flu epidemic swamps emergency rooms across the country, reports FRANCE 24.
French health minister Marisol Touraine on Wednesday said the death toll for the 2016/2017 flu season would probably be “high” and that an unusually large number of people were “seriously ill”.
“We absolutely have to make sure there are enough hospital beds available,” she said. The epidemic is expected to peak next week.
"Emergency rooms are at breaking point,” François Braun, head of France’s Samu-Urgences de France ambulance group, told AFP on Wednesday. “All regions of France are affected.”
Christophe Prudhomme, head of the CGT union division representing emergency room medical staff, said flu sufferers, the vast majority of whom are elderly, were sometimes waiting “24 hours on stretchers” for treatment, resulting in a large number of “preventable deaths”.
“Already stretched, hospitals are in no position to assure a normal service when there is a flu epidemic,” he said.