Reshuffle: emergency doctor François Braun appointed Minister of Health and Prevention

Francois Braun, in Pontoise (Val-d’Oise), July 1, 2022. GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT / AFP The name was not – or no longer – part of those expected at the Ministry of Health. In the midst of a hospital crisis, in the front row in the emergency services, it was finally an emergency doctor, François Braun, who was chosen to take over from Brigitte Bourguignon. The short-lived Minister of “Health and Prevention” was to leave office, just a month and a half after being appointed, following his defeat in the legislative elections in Pas-de-Calais. A failure that occurred in a tense context: alerts have been increasing for months in the medical community, about a particularly delicate coming summer in hospitals, due to lack of sufficient staff. The choice for this mission which promises to be difficult has therefore settled on a profile of “civil society”, a hospital, and not a politician. François Braun had, at the end of last week, returned the conclusions of a “flash mission” which had been entrusted to him by Emmanuel Macron, precisely, to solve the summer ills of the hospital. Elisabeth Borne had just made her forty-one proposals her own. He will be able to apply them himself. He can count on the support of Agnès Firmin le Bodo, who has been appointed deputy minister, in charge of “territorial organization and health professions”. The 53-year-old pharmacist by profession, deputy for the 7th district of Seine-Maritime and member of Horizons, was elected on June 30 as president of the commission for cultural affairs and education at the National Assembly. Improving patient orientation François Braun is far from unknown in the medical community, as well as on the public scene: Emmanuel Macron’s “health” referent during the presidential campaign, at the helm of the preparation of the candidate’s program on these questions, the boss of SAMU de Moselle and head of the emergency department at the regional hospital center of Metz-Thionville, 59, is also the president of Samu-Urgences de France. Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Crisis in emergencies: closures, strikes and the regret of “lost time” In his forty-one proposals, François Braun proposed several avenues intended to allow hospitals to hold out for the summer, covering city medicine up to the hospital. In addition to bed closures, which affect all floors of hospitals, for lack of caregivers, after two years of crisis due to Covid-19 and years of budgetary restrictions, many emergency services are already finding themselves forced to reduce the airfoil, in closing at night, on weekends or by reducing the number of on-call doctors. Thus, one hundred and twenty services were in great difficulty, from May 20, according to a survey by Samu-Urgences de France. You have 39.83% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.