France Feels the Heat
A Heat Wave Turned Disasterous
John Lichfield, The Independent (liberal), London, England, Aug. 22, 2003
Kouchner is one of the founders of Doctors Without Borders and a former Socialist health minister. He might have been expected to lead the (partly deserved) lashing of the bungled and sluggish response of the center-right government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin. This was, after all, a government that came to power promising to be attentive to “the needs of ordinary people.”
... Kouchner has made two observations on the catastrophe ... First, if he and the left were still in power, they would probably have done no better. Second, the real cause of the calamity was a collision between something irresistible and exceptional—the weather—and something banal but utterly unmovable: the French obsession with holidays and their inalienable right, as a nation, all to go on holiday at the same time.
“We are all to blame,” Kouchner said, making himself even more unpopular than he already was with his Socialist colleagues.
All over France, hospital wards were closed down this month to allow staff to go on holiday...
Thousands of other old people, living at home but too infirm or too poor to go on holiday, found their apartment blocks or neighborhoods deserted. There were no relatives or neighbors to turn to for help. ...
How could this happen? The left (Kouchner apart) is blaming the government, which was, of course, on holiday.
... But the main point is Kouchner’s point: At holiday times, the coverage of the health-care system—declared by the United Nations to be the best in the world—is dangerously thin.
In the last Easter holidays, a close friend had to have an emergency operation on her eye. No state hospital in Paris could take her in during the holiday weekend. Admissions were allowed for life-or-death cases only. Saving the sight of an eye did not qualify. She had to have her operation done in the private (and expensive) American Hospital in the Paris suburbs. France is a nation of individualists who insist on the right, individually, to do the same thing as each other, at the same time, every year.
The August holidays, especially the first half of August, are considered sacred. ... In the longer run, nothing much is likely to change.
