Health authorities are worried. The bronchiolitis epidemic continues to progress in France, which is why the Minister of Health, François Braun, has decided to initiate the white plan provided for in exceptional health situations in all French hospitals while pediatric services are already in tension. “I decided this morning, in addition to everything that was already mobilized, to trigger the ORSAN plan (organization of the response of the health system in exceptional health situations) specific to this epidemic, to further strengthen the means of the ARS ( regional health agencies) and allow the entire hospital to focus on this particularly acute problem today,” he told the Senate.
Created in 2014, the ORSAN device makes it possible to “reorganize the supply of care” in the hospital, but also in the city and in the medico-social sector to “reallocate resources with regard to the priorities identified”, indicates the ministry’s website. of Health. This can in particular take the form of the “recall of hospital staff” and the “reinforcement of the permanence of ambulatory care”, that is to say of the call duty of private doctors in the evenings and on weekends, or even, “if the local resources are no longer sufficient”, by mobilizing the health reserve.
François Braun “wishes that this plan be fully implemented at regional level, under the authority of the ARS”, which will thus be able to “finely adapt hospitalization capacities” and “ensure the full mobilization of all health actors, public and private,” the ministry said in a statement. This announcement follows the release of an extension of 400 million euros for hospitals, intended to support pediatrics and other “services under pressure”, in particular by doubling the remuneration of night hours until March 31 .
Noting a “continued increase” in indicators, “despite a shift in connection with the Toussaint school holidays”, Public Health France pointed out this Wednesday “numbers of visits to the emergency room and hospitalizations for bronchiolitis very high and at levels higher than those observed at epidemic peaks for more than ten years”. A total of 6,891 children under the age of two went to the emergency room for bronchiolitis in mainland France in the week from October 31 to November 6, i.e. a weekly increase of 7%, much less however than the increase of the previous week (+47 %). Some 2,337 children were eventually hospitalized.