“We are deeply upset, and it’s a collective sentiment!” General practitioner, president of the French Union for a free medicine, Jérôme Marty has multiplied the speeches to promote vaccination, and justify the obligation of him in the hospital system, since the beginning of the health crisis opened by the Covid-19 at the beginning of 2020.
So much to say that the announcement made on Thursday by the Minister of Health, François Braun, angers him. The latter indicated that he was going to join an opinion of the High Health Authority (HAS) published the same day, which changed the vaccination of caregivers from mandatory to “highly recommended.” Paving the way for the reintegration of unvaccinated caregivers.
“We carried out the vaccination campaign (…). The government should not count on us to carry out the next campaigns, they will only have to carry them out with antivax!”, he says from BFMTV.com.
“Pick a thorn out of your foot”
For 18 months, all caregivers working in France have been required to be vaccinated against Covid-19, under penalty of suspension. The vast majority, aware of the benefits such an approach brings, doctors, nurses or even caregivers complied with the decision. According to some estimates, between 2,000 and 4,000 carers have been suspended for refusing to receive an injection, although with a more pronounced dynamic in the West Indies.
But for a few months, certain opposition parties, such as La France Insoumise or the National Rally, have been campaigning for the reinstatement of suspended carers. A decision on which the Government still refused to back down, last December.
For Benjamin Davido, an infectious disease specialist at the Raymond-Poincaré de Garches hospital, by making this decision, the government wanted to “remove a thorn in its foot.” The specialist recalls that many caregivers have not received a reminder against Covid-19 since March 2022, so they are poorly protected against the disease.
Therefore, it is easier to lift the vaccination obligation instead of “establishing a new mandatory withdrawal campaign”.
“We give the stick so that they hit us. Many times I have patients who ask me if I am vaccinated. By answering ‘yes’, I can tell you that the vaccine is not dangerous, that it reduces the risk of infection by 50% With this lifting, there is a risk of credibility of the doctor, who is no longer on his exemplary pedestal ”, details Benjamin Davido.
rising indicators
The announcement bothers the interviewed doctors all the more since it is made at a time when the indicators of the epidemic are rising again. During the week of March 13-19, Santé Publique France wrote in its newsletter that although at “low levels”, the incidence and positivity rates “continued to increase”, and this for the “second week in a row”.
Still according to Benjamín Davido, the reinsertion of unvaccinated caregivers, “is a disconcerting message, because the virus runs the risk of circulating faster, stronger. We run the risk of giving him fresh blood with young keepers. And that is also accompanied by a relaxation of barrier gestures. at the hospital”.
“We have a virus that continues to circulate. And who tells us that a new dangerous variant will not appear? It is a political reasoning”, sweeps Jérôme Marty.
A broader questioning of vaccination?
In addition to the vaccine against Covid-19, the HAS also expressed itself in the same opinion on the DTP vaccine, which attacks diphtheria, tetanus and poliomyelitis, also recommending the cessation of its obligation. “If we continue in this dynamic, everything will collapse, the entire vaccination system,” fears Benjamín Davido.
“This message alerts me even more than the Covid one,” he continues.
An observation that Mathias Wargon, head of emergencies at the Delafontaine hospital center in Seine-Saint-Denis, shared at RMC this Friday: “It is a message sent to the anti-vaccination. We are a very anti-vaccination country, telling them that vaccination against Covid, already It is not mandatory, but also that against the DTP… It is a bad message sent“.
And this while the government intends to reinforce vaccination against the human papillomavirus in universities, as Emmanuel Macron announced last February.
“It is a very bad message, the next vaccination campaign will take care of itself”, warned Mathias Wargon.
Fear of tensions in services
Finally, doctors are concerned to see tensions arise in services that will be reinstated by unvaccinated caregivers.
“This will create tension in the services and, above all, in those who have lost their jobs, they are the most extreme! They will proselytize anti-vaccines!” Jérôme Marty fumes, wondering if “you want it to be people who think that the vaccine is to control people through 5G who are treating their grandparents”.
For Benjamín Davido, who has 1% of the medical-social staff of his suspended squad, “this will not strengthen the ties in the teams.”
“Ils n’ont pas manqué aux équipes. Ils ont fait le choix du retrait au plus fort de la pandémie, et clairement, si demain ils reviennent, cela n’est pas sûr que ça soit vu d’un bon œil”, croit -He.
Source: BFM TV
