- PARIS -- A triple epidemic
of winter diseases among children has plunged French medical services into
crisis again, four months after the world's most-praised health system
failed to cope with the August heatwave.
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- The problems do not easily compare with the summer catastrophe
in which about 15,000 people died, but casualty wards in Paris and other
large cities were overwhelmed at the weekend, with some parents and children
waiting 12 hours for treatment. Patients in Paris were transferred to Lille,
140 miles to the north, to free beds for critically ill children.
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- The government, criticised in the summer for reacting
too slowly to the epidemic of heat-related stress among the old, called
medical staff back from leave and plans to bring forward examination results
of student nurses so they can be drafted to understaffed wards.
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- The Health Minister, Jean-Francois Mattei, said the crisis
was caused by GPs who had closed their surgeries for the weekend, leaving
casualty units to cope with simultaneous epidemics of influenza and gastro-enteritis
among children and bronchiolitis (a viral infection of the lungs) among
babies. The three illnesses commonly cause late autumn and winter epidemics
in France but rarely appear together.
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- Hospital doctors also accused GPs in Paris and other
cities of failing to organise a proper rota system for weekend care. GPs
rejected the accusation as "outrageous" and "intolerable".
They said the problem was caused by the coincidence of the epidemics and
by the reduced, 35-hour working week for hospital staff.
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- The head of the Paris casualty service, Dr Virgine Weigel,
said several wards were closed because of staff shortage. France has nine
hospital beds for every 1,000 people, compared to 4.9 in the UK. The publicly
funded health service in France costs £60bn a year, compared to £45bn
in Britain, which has roughly the same number of people.
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- © 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=469239
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