“Public hospitals welcomed all patients in the middle of summer, including tourists, in the best conditions”

Lhe Paralympic Games are an extension of the success of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. A month of sport and celebration, after which it will be time to take stock. But before the Games end the political truce and the previous debates resume, let us dare to take stock of the public hospital. In Paris and Marseille, where the sailing and football events took place, and in all the host cities, the public hospital teams did not reach any podium. However, they deserve great recognition.

They first did what everyone has seen, welcoming all patients in the middle of summer, tourists included, in the best conditions. In all circumstances, our country’s public hospitals remain the recourse of our fellow citizens for almost everything: emergencies, pediatrics, rare diseases or cancers. If France does not turn into a medical desert every summer, it is very often because hospital teams are on duty.

The hospital teams also provided exemplary care to the Olympic family, athletes and members of delegations from around the world. They helped to project the image of a modern country, with an efficient health system, endowed with very great medical expertise and bearing the fine values ​​of openness and hospitality of the “French” public service.

Main response to health needs

Our hospitals had finally organized and prepared for several months for the risk of a massive influx of victims in the event of an attack, crowd movement, cyberattack or other. Exercises had taken place with other public security and emergency services, particularly in the harbor of Marseille. During the Games, the teams were ready in the SAMU crisis room, open every morning “just in case”, in the emergency room and in the operating theaters. France’s credibility in organizing these major sporting events also depends on this skill in anticipation and crisis management.

But after these Games, we are once again struck by the contrast between the excellence of our public hospitals, the praise usually heard from patients and this time from the organisers of the Games in Marseille and these recurring speeches of a public hospital on the brink of collapse.

While it is true that some public hospitals lack, for example, doctors to provide on-call duty, the political and media machinery transforms any difficulty, major or minor in one region or another, into a generality that too often takes away the public hospital as a whole. This is how opinions are born without discernment or nuance on the public hospital, to the point of theorizing the failure of our health system.

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