The mobile unit of the New Civil Hospital of Strasbourg will close after a year of service, unions are worried

Deployed more than a year ago in a context of saturation of emergencies, the USM (mobile health unit) of the Nouveau Civil de Strasbourg will be dismantled on January 6, causing concern among caregivers and their unions.

She was only supposed to stay a week, she ended up staying a year. The mobile health unit, installed in the parking lot of the Strasbourg university hospital, will be dismantled at the beginning of January.

The Strasbourg hospital deployed a new mobile unit in December 2023 to relieve the emergency department. This resulted from a structural crisis in emergency rooms which must face an epidemic of bronchiolitis in infants and an increased number of respiratory viruses – including Covid-19 – which require hospitalization.

The unit could accommodate up to eight patients, supervised by firefighters, before being taken to the emergency room.

4,000 patients welcomed

This structure welcomed 4,000 patients in one year. The shutdown of this unit is bad news for the unions. “We are not surprised that it is closing. The difficulty is the length of time it has been open,” judges Christian Prud'homme, general secretary of Force Ouvrière at Strasbourg University Hospital, speaking to BFM Alsace.

“It was clearly noted that 50 empty beds are needed every day to be able to absorb the patients arriving at the emergency level. However, yesterday there were 30 patients waiting for a bed and there were zero beds available at the CHU at 8 a.m. in the morning,” regrets the latter.

According to him, “we need to increase the capacity of the entire CHU by 100/150 beds”. He recalls that over the last 10 years, “we have closed 800 beds across the entire CHU”.