The bad example of Olivier Véran on the SNCF to justify the use of private firms – The HuffPost

FACT CHECKING – “Each time, it’s hard on everything. We cannot sometimes recognize that there are things that have succeeded and that there is a mobilization of everyone in our country” in the face of the Covid-19. Wednesday February 16 on France Info, Olivier Veran was not happy with the question put to him. But his answer falls short.

The Minister was asked about the significant use of private practices within the Ministry of Health, revealed in the book Infiltratorspublished this Thursday, February 17. Olivier Veran justified himself by recalling that faced with the emergency of the pandemic, it was necessary to call on “experts” wherever they are, in order to be as effective as possible. For him, this controversy is simply due to the fact that “the private sector would be dirty in this country”.

And the minister listed the examples: the logistics of vaccines, masks… or even the medicalization of TGV during the first wave to unclog hospitals in the regions most affected by the Covid-19 in April 2020. “When you have to equip a TGV in 48 hours to transport 30 patients in coma, intubated, ventilated, from the Grand Est to the south-east of France, you are happy to find people who have the competence to do so ”, launches Olivier Véran, adding that these specialists, “they are in the private sector, they are not in the administration nor in my ministry”.

The problem is that this is not the case. These sanitary TGVs have been set up… via a “100% public service” partnership, specifies in HuffPost a leading source SNCF TGV-Intercités. The minister’s entourage explains to us that there was “confusion in his response” and “would like to apologize to all the professionals involved”. Explanations.

On March 24, 2020, Olivier Véran announced the mobilization of these “Medical TGVs”. On March 26, a first TGV left the Grand Est, whose intensive care beds are saturated, bound for the Pays de la Loire. An unprecedented operation…well, almost.

Because in reality, these “sanitary TGVs” have already been tested in the past. “There are partly medicalized TGVs for transport pilgrims sick in Lourdes, explains to the HuffPost Wilfried Demaret, driver-rescuer at the SNCF behind the Twitter account BB27000which shares a lot of information about the railway world.

“A TGV transformation kit was also developed in partnership with the Samu de Paris after the attacks of November 13 and an experiment took place in 2019”, he recalls. The video below demonstrates this:

Did Olivier Véran mean that the implementation of this type of TGV during the first wave, so complicated, required the participation of private consulting firms? Again, this is not the case. Our source at the SNCF tells us that the company was surprised by the minister’s remarks and rather evokes “an error” than a lie.

In any case, she is categorical: “Of course, we never had a link, nor did we need external firms to carry out these medicalized TGVs. This achievement, a great source of pride, is 100% public services”.

Olivier Véran apologizes to SNCF and Samu

Contacted by The HuffPost, Olivier Véran’s entourage provided us with several details. “There was confusion in his answer: if certain medical evacuations called on private sector companies – and not consulting firms (in particular companies that own aircraft adapted for the transfer of patients from overseas departments -mer), transfers by medicalized TGV were organized by the departments of the Ministry, the ARS, health establishments, the SNCF, the SAMU and numerous public actors who, through their expertise, made it possible to design and carry out this unprecedented operation.

A shameful confusion, whereas precisely on France Info, Olivier Véran seemed irritated by these public/private debates and launched in conclusion of the extract: “every time, it’s haro on everything. We cannot sometimes recognize that there are things that have succeeded and that there is a mobilization of everyone in our country”.

Here, it is a mobilization of the public service which is to be welcomed… and has even inspired our neighbours. “Spain in 2021 even asked the SNCF for advice to carry out the same program, an expert at TGV-IC shared the technical information, the needs, etc.”, we are told.

Faced with this error, the Minister makes his mea culpa and “wishes to apologize to all the professionals mobilized for this unfortunate sentence and to remind them of all his gratitude”. And to recall that in the face of the pandemic, the goal of the State and the Ministry of Health was to do “everything to protect our fellow citizens and, in this mission, all forces, public but also private, have been able to be used, as soon as we needed them”.

See also on The HuffPost: images of the medicalized TGV which evacuated its first patients from East to West