Guingamp: maternity activity suspended for at least two months due to lack of personnel

A new illustration of the lack of nursing staff in France. In mid-April, the Regional Health Agency made the decision to suspend deliveries for at least two months at the Guingamp maternity ward in Côtes-d’Armor. The reason: teams decimated and exhausted due to the absence of midwives, gynecologists or even anesthetists.

“Are you going to welcome me?”

In this city of just over 7,000 inhabitants, anger gives way to concern, especially among pregnant women. Mallory, who had her first child in this maternity hospital, doubts that she will be able to give birth here again, since she is again a few months pregnant. Despite the two-month closure, the unions fear a suspension of activities of at least four months.

“We don’t have a lot of things to manage. We don’t know what the delivery day is going to be like, and when we don’t know where we’re going to give birth, it’s stressful, it’s complicated. manage,” he says on BFMTV.

On the very day of the birth, if the maternity ward is not reopened by then, Mallory will be forced to be driven by car to another hospital, located several tens of minutes from Guingamp.

“The day I go to another maternity hospital, will they receive me? I’m not necessarily going to know the places, the equipment. The fear is finding you giving birth in the car,” she laments.

“Decomposing Strategy”

At the local level, the population is mobilizing against this decision. West of France announces that this Wednesday, the committee for the defense of the public hospital and the offer of care in the country of Guingamp is organizing a public meeting before a large demonstration organized on June 24 “for the right to be born, to live, to be care, work and die in the fields!” the committee said in a statement.

“This situation was predictable since we denounced from the beginning a strategy of decline that consisted of dissuading teams from staying and potential signings from coming to Guingamp. It worked, it is an exhausted team that needs to protect itself ”, denounces Yann-Fanch Durand, co-chairman of the committee, on his part on BFMTV.

Guingamp’s situation is not unique in the country. According to a report submitted to the Academy of Medicine, in France, 30% of small maternity hospitals have disappeared in 10 years due to lack of staff. This same report indicates that it is “illusory to sustain” maternity hospitals performing less than 1,000 deliveries per year, desperately destined to disappear.