What future for the Sarlat hospital, its emergency rooms and its maternity ward? Questions that Benoît Elleboode will undoubtedly have to answer during his trip to the Dordogne on Friday October 4. The director general of the Regional Health Agency (ARS) will visit the hospital center of the town of Périgord Noir to evoke “perinatal activities” et “emergency room renovation work”. He must meet the elected officials.
A “Koala unit” to support pregnant women
Benoît Elleboode will also receive the Defense Committee of the Sarlat hospital and the Association of citizens against medical deserts. These collectives are worried that women will soon no longer be able to give birth at all in Sarlat. Due to a lack of staff, gynecologists, pediatricians or anesthesiologists, the delivery room has not been in operation for 166 days since the start of the year. It remained closed more often than open. Deliveries are suspended again at the moment, since July 25 and until October 21. Pregnant women must therefore give birth in Périgueux, Bergerac, Brive, or Cahors, that is to say necessarily more than an hour’s drive from Sarlat.
The director of the ARS should officially announce the creation of Koala unitlaunched since the beginning of June. This is a team of midwives and childcare assistants which goes to pregnant women and new mothers who have given birth elsewhere to provide support and follow-up. Caregivers and users fear that this unit is only preparation for the total cessation of deliveries at the Sarlat maternity ward.
No question of closing the maternity ward, assured the ARS in 2023
“The current staff is unable to ensure both the Koala project and its presence within the technical platform of the maternityé, denounces the hospital defense committee in a press release. So what will happen for future mothers, since the technical platform will therefore remain closed day and night? Mothers will therefore be forced to give birth elsewhere. Before being received by the director of the ARS, the committee organizes a rally in front of Sarlat hospital Friday at 10:30 a.m..
Benoît Elleboode had already come to Sarlat hospital in April 2023. He then assured that he was not no question of closing the maternity ward. The emergency department is also facing a staff shortage. The reception is very regularly closed for lack of an emergency doctor. A situation “complicated” recognized by the director of the ARS in Dordogne, Didier Couteaudwho explained last August that he was working on a “new departmental and inter-departmental organization”. As for the work planned for emergencies, the former Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, had already announced an investment of 17 million euros to renovate the emergency rooms of Sarlat hospital during a trip in July 2023.
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