“Maybe 30, 40 calls…” Xavier, 38, doesn’t know anymore. Exasperated, he stopped counting the phone calls he made to get an appointment at a dental office in Haute-Vienne.
“When my dentist retired in 2023, I started looking for a new one… It’s an unspeakable hassle. I started with Limoges, then I broadened my research. » Bosmie-l'Aiguille, Panazol, Ambazac, Pierre-Buffière, and even Donzenac, Brive or even Angoulême: this resident of Solignac was ready to travel miles.
Each time, the secretariats told me that the office was not taking new patients. I was also refused because I was not a resident of the municipality in question. And when I asked where to go for follow-up, I was referred to Bordeaux or Toulouse!
If Xavier calls himself mobile, he would dream of having a lasting local solution. But the horizon is far from clearing.
The situation of this thirty-year-old, anything but exceptional, is not going to improve given the number of departures of practitioners in Haute-Vienne: 17 (already effective or announced) between June 2024 and June 2025 in the department, according to the council of the order, and only four arrivals – including three employees by the Mutualité française limousine, in Feytiat and Saint-Junien*. Particularly affected by this deficit, the west of the department.
A series of departures from Aixe-sur-Vienne, Rochechouart, Séreilhac…
“Liberal colleagues are retiring in Séreilhac, Saint-Junien, Rochechouart, Aixe-sur-Vienne in the days, weeks or months to come, without a successor. It will become very complicated in this area, because all the practices in place are saturated,” laments Dominique Moreau-Pascal, president of the Order of Dental Surgeons in Haute-Vienne.
Until around ten years ago, the living areas of Rochechouart, Saint-Junien, Aixe-sur-Vienne and Châlus were not considered areas in difficulty in the mapping established by the regional health agency for the allocation of installation aid. But in a decade, the situation has deteriorated, to the point of having become “catastrophic”, continues Dominique Moreau-Pascal.
