A few kilometers south of Paris, Dr. Christian Chenay is the oldest doctor still active. Despite his age, he continues to receive regularly at his home hundreds of patients. In “Discovery reports” broadcast on January 4 (source 1), the TF1 teams went to meet him in the town of Chevilly-Larue, in Val-de-Marne.
Retire? This does not interest Dr. Christian Chenay. For over 70 yearshe practices his profession with passion and was honored by the Council of the Order of Physicians for its record longevity. Over the years, he has become “a hero” in the eyes of his patients and has seen a good number of people pass through his office, located on the ground floor of his house. “He followed my mother, my grandmother, my aunts, my uncles, my children, my grandchildren too,” testifies a faithful patient, whom the doctor gave birth to on November 18, 1968. “He is very precious because we can't find any doctors and I trust him completely, with my eyes closed,” she adds.
Twenty consultations per week of Dr. Chenay are mainly small emergencies, such as an asthma attack and prescription refills. It doesn't seem like much and yet, it allows the few 450 regular patients to benefit from care in a sector affected by the lack of doctors. “The day he stops, I don’t know where I’m going to go. Now, to get a doctor, it's very difficult. They don't take the new ones, they don't take them anymore. Fortunately he is there, he helps me out,” confides a patient on TF1. For his part, Christian Chenay especially feels the need to be useful as long as it can. “Even if it means doing an activity, it might as well be useful. We're being used as a stopgap, and there are really a lot of holes. »
Despite its 103 blown candlesDr Christian Chenay still does not plan to hand over the reins. In 2023, he assured our colleagues of Parisian (Source 2) that he would not stop practicing until he “has managed to fit everyone in”. Before specifying: “When I have lost my memory, I will stop”.
Currently, a little more than 13,500 doctors are in a situation of cumulative employment-retirementor 11% of active practitioners and 15% of retired doctors, according to the Autonomous Retirement Fund for Doctors of France (Source 3).
