French GPs have gone on strike for the second time this month as the country’s hospitals face a “triple epidemic” of Covid-19, bronchiolitis and flu, reports The Times.
The week-long walkout over consultation rates and working conditions follows a two-day strike on December 1st and 2nd which saw activity in GP surgeries fall by 30 per cent, according to the French national health insurer.
Organisers are calling for the basic price of a medical consultation to be doubled from 25 euros to 50 euros; the European average is 45 euros. These fees are usually covered by medical insurance or the state so most patients would be sheltered from the extra cost.
They say this is the only way to retain young doctors — who are increasingly fleeing the profession — and combat “medical deserts”. The term is used in France to refer to areas where there are not enough doctors for the number of residents.
GPs are also protesting changes that will allow nurses to prescribe medication and provide certain treatments, saying that this will undermine their role.
The nationwide strike, the first since 2015, is unusual in both its length and scale, and it has attracted the support of both the Left and far-right. It has not been called by unions but by a new group called Doctors for Tomorrow, which claims to represent 16,000 practitioners.
Julien Sibour, a doctor in the south of France and a spokesman for the collective, said that GPs’ workload “just keeps piling up — we’re doing an average of 55 hours a week”.