Doctors sound the alarm. Without reform of the perinatal care system, it is going “to shipwreck”, report together the French Society of Perinatal Medicine (SFMP), several learned societies and an association of users who are appealing to the government on Saturday. “It is imperative to rethink and reorganize our perinatal care system, because today all the indicators are red”, alarmed the SFMP in a column published by Le Monde.
The report shared by learned medical societies and organizations of gynecologists-obstetricians, neonatologists or even anesthesiologists-resuscitators, but also an association of users, consignors of the text, is based particularly on the worrying increase in infant mortality during the last decade which places the country in 25th place in Europe, while in 2012 France was in 2nd position.
“When we know the situation of maternity wards, how can we not make the link between these alarming indicators and the deterioration of working conditions? ask these doctors and users.
A few days after the publication in the press of the conclusions of a report presented to the Academy of Medicine which proposes to reduce by 20% the number of maternity wards in France, the authors of the tribune call on the public authorities to put an end to their ” inertia” and call for the perinatal care system to be redesigned “in a comprehensive, realistic and coherent manner”.
“The technical platforms must be grouped together in better equipped and computerized maternity wards which accommodate several levels of care and offer working conditions allowing patients and their children to be supported in complete safety and in good treatment”, judge the co-signatories. This “grouping of technical platforms” which will result in maternity closures “must be accompanied by the multiplication of local perinatal centers (CPP)”, they add.
The SFMP, the other signatory learned medical societies and the SOS Prema user association are calling for the meeting of national perinatal conferences. Aware of the politically sensitive nature of maternity closures, they call for “awareness of the issues by the population” which alone “can prevent disaster”.
