A health van serving fragile and isolated populations

This vehicle, which is the size of a camper van, will be used for medical consultations, vaccination, screening or prevention campaigns. It replaces an aging truck which only did chest x-rays to detect tuberculosis and which was too bulky.

It is entirely financed by the Regional Health Agency for an investment of 315,000 euros. It operates with staff from the “public health prevention” service of the Department of Isère. In this vehicle we find according to Doctor Gaelle Vareilles, “a chest x-ray machine for tuberculosis screening. But this device is mobile. It can be removed to save space for consultations. This allows us to carry out vaccination outside the walls. If we go to a squat, in an accommodation center we sometimes do not have the premises well suited for good hygiene and to be able to carry out vaccinations and screening for sexually transmitted infections and then we will work with our protection colleagues maternal and infant and those of autonomy to have joint actions with an otherwise varied public”

This van is part of the departmental health center on rue Albert 1er de Belgique in Grenoble. A center where around forty agents from the departmental council work dedicated to prevention, vaccination, sexual health and gynecological consultation missions. For Jean Pierre Pierre Barbier, president of the department of Isère: “these are essential missions and yet little fulfilled in private medicine or in hospitals. We also do medical abortion.” In January, the department launched an HPV vaccination campaign in colleges. “It is a vaccination against the papillomavirus that we give to young girls in college who have not yet had sexual relations. Papillomavirus that can cause cancer“continues the president of the department.”It’s a complicated thing. we need to educate parents to explain why they took this vaccination“. This vaccination campaign will be carried out in particular thanks to this new health van.