The emergency department of the Pays de Savoie Private Hospital (HPPS) in Annemasse (Haute-Savoie) is closed until Monday morning after the attack on its staff on Wednesday evening by two men which left six people injured, said Thursday its direction.
“The service staff are in a real state of psychological shock,” a spokesperson for the establishment told AFP, confirming information from the regional daily “Le Dauphiné Libéré”.
According to the hospital, the attack occurred around 11 p.m. while one of the two suspects, both “aged around thirty”, was waiting on a stretcher in the treatment area as as a patient after administrative treatment.
Coming from outside, his companion then managed to sneak into the department whose doors were closed before attacking a nurse “verbally and physically”, “dissatisfied” after “ten minutes of waiting” as part of the charge.
“He pushed her, dragged her by the hair” before being joined by his accomplice who was on the stretcher. Around fifteen emergency members including a doctor “came to the aid of their colleague”, receiving blows from the two men who “then fled” by car, according to the same source.
Among the fourteen personnel involved, “all in a state of psychological shock”, six suffered from “facial swelling” and for some of them “a cracked rib, trauma to an ankle or a fracture with one hand. They were all due to file a complaint Thursday evening at the Annemasse police station.
-“Monday morning, we will reassess the situation for potentially a reopening” of the service, concluded the management of the hospital, which has 250 beds and whose emergency rooms record around a hundred daily consultations.
In a joint press release, the Haute-Savoie prefecture and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Regional Health Agency (ARS) “strongly” condemned these “acts of aggression” against health personnel like those which took place in in addition “between the month of December (last) and the beginning of January” in the department.
“At the beginning of December, at the Sallanches Hospital, two nursing staff were violently attacked (…) On January 6, a SMUR vehicle belonging to the Annecy-Genevois Hospital Center was stoned during an intervention,” recall them, emphasizing their “unfailing support” for healthcare workers.
Every day, on average, in France, 65 healthcare professionals are victims of physical or verbal attacks, according to the same source.
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