LFrance is sick! In September 2014, the Minister of the Economy Emmanuel Macron, now President of the Republic, affirmed this loud and clear. Eight years later, it remains so. But what is she suffering from? Let’s dare to make a diagnosis in the light of three symptoms, markers of this pathology: akinesia, that is to say the difficulty or slowness in initiating a movement, stiffness and tremor. Judge for yourself…
In February 2008, an “Alzheimer plan” was created in Sophia Antipolis. It marks the awareness, by the French State, of a major human and societal challenge through those who are affected by the first neurodegenerative disease in France and in the world. It is based on ten “flagship measures” and has a budget of 1.6 billion euros over five years.
The next government continued on the path of this first effort with the “neurodegenerative disease plan 2014-2019” by extending it to Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. Only hiatus, this plan with broader contours has a budget divided by three, or 470 million euros.
There followed two years of vacation, partly linked to the Covid-19 crisis, before the drafting of a 2021-2022 “neurodegenerative diseases” roadmap to which the patient associations concerned contributed, urgently supplemented by a of road 2023-2024 never validated and forgotten in the open election campaign. No implementation schedule or specific budget. A road in the form of a dead end.
Regulatory stiffness
In neurology, there is a term for it. We are talking about « freezing », a symptom that qualifies in English the impossibility of moving forward. Just one example among many others. In March 2022, with the laudable intention of preventing people who are not fit to drive from causing road accidents, the government updates, by decree, the list of medical conditions likely to lead to temporary or permanent incompatibility with driving.
Six categories of pathologies and thirty-one sub-categories (ranging from diabetes to hearing loss via strokes, neurodegenerative diseases and kidney failure) are included. To our knowledge, no patient association has been consulted. As a result, this decree is inapplicable as it stands, and tens of thousands of motorists drive on French roads without even knowing that they are doing so illegally.
Rigidity coupled with akinesia since the appeal before the Council of State filed in June 2022 by our association as well as the APF France handicap, France Alzheimer and the French Society of Neurology, should not receive a response before September 2023. Obviously, this symptom is present everywhere. Not a day goes by without our volunteers bringing up the testimonies of patients who protest against the impossibility of accessing essential care (neurologists, physiotherapists, speech therapists, etc.) or difficulties linked to shortages of medication.
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