The athletes are preparing for the Paris Games, and so is the hospital system. “The health system is ready to host the Olympic Games,” assures Minister Delegate for Health Frédéric Valletoux in an interview this Sunday, April 8 at Parisian, ensuring that “all crisis scenarios” are considered. “Caregivers are keen to respond during this period, as they always do,” said the minister while hospitals and private clinics announced “a total strike” from June 3.
Reference hospitals for the Olympics
While hospital activity is generally sustained during the summer period in the Paris region, the minister assured that the expected increase in attendance would be “modest” (around 150 more visits per day). Or 5% in total, more trips to the emergency room. “All hands are on deck”, “the organizations are ready, the plans have been made”, he said.
In addition, around fifteen Parisian and suburban hospitals will be designated as “reference hospitals”. Among which are Bichat, Georges Pompidou, and Avicenne in Bobigny and Foch in Suresne. “A polyclinic dedicated to athletes is being set up within the Olympic village, with all the necessary equipment and staff,” he explains. In total, Paris is expecting 10,000 Olympic athletes, 4,350 Paralympic athletes, and 26,000 accredited journalists, not counting the 15 million visitors. The minister must still meet with the Minister of Sports, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, on April 24 to “take stock”, but he says “I see that the health system is ready to host the Games”.
400 volunteer emergency doctors recruited
To try to avoid congestion in the emergency services of Parisian hospitals, the Minister Delegate highlighted the recruitment of 400 volunteer emergency doctors by the organizing committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. They will be directly located on the competition sites to take care of spectator discomfort, injuries, etc. For the rest, “the Regional Health Agency (ARS) has done a lot of work with city doctors, health centers , liberal care offers and pharmacies to organize and measure who plans to be there during the Olympics”, he explained, adding that requisitions are not on the program and instead advocating “incentives to stay open during this period. The doctors working at the hospital, being state employees, will receive a bonus if they decide to stay to swell the ranks of the workforce during the games. Which is not the case for private doctors.
Frédéric Valletoux also assured that “all scenarios are considered”: heat wave, food poisoning, cyber risk, large gatherings, crowd movements, terrorist attack… “We now have a culture of crisis management”, he said. he affirmed, thereby explaining that “all infectious risks are taken into account”. “The hospital fabric will make it possible to deal with a possible epidemic,” according to him. Even if “zero risk does not exist”, he admits.
The executive does not rule out cyberattacks either, while dozens of hospitals in France have been targeted in recent years. “The disaster scenario would be to have IT resources that completely fail us in a hospital but, very sincerely, the JOPs have allowed us to raise the level of security in our hospitals,” explained the minister. 60 million euros must still be invested in 2024 to further secure health establishments.