Thousands of hospital workers donned white coats as they marched through Paris yesterday. The protesters are demanding greater investment in the health service to fund higher salaries and the hiring of new nurses.
Health workers, who have been holding strikes for over 10 months to demand more government funding, said hospitals have been thinly staffed for years, and patient care has deteriorated.
Manuela Duringon, a nurse who works night shifts at a hospital just outside Paris, called out French Health Minister, Agnes Buzyn.
“Mrs. Buzyn has to stop saying that all is well and that she’s given money and doesn’t know what we are doing the streets. I’d like to see Mrs. Buzyn one day in a bed and being told ‘there is no personnel, we cannot relieve your pain and change you’. We’ll see what Mrs. Buzyn says at that point.”
France will absorb 10 billion euros of public hospital debt, the government announced in November 2019, as part of emergency measures aimed at ending the months of street protests by fed up doctors and nurses, but it remains to be seen whether it will be enough to convince the protesters to stop the strikes.