General Practitioners in the Heart of the Suburban Rebellion
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
A Press Release from the Syndicat de la Medicine Générale
[General Practitioners Trade Union]
There are still General Practitioners working in the housing projects where
the rebellion is rumbling.
We are in a privileged position to witness the deterioration of living conditions
that have transformed the residents’ daily lives into a series of humiliations,
which in turn lead to illness. Our doctor’s offices are the places where this
suffering is expressed. We cannot remain impassive, nor can we claim to be
professionals who are not implicated in this suffering. The government’s policies
have a tendency to use General Practitioners to smother revolt, forbidding
us to do anything other than giving out drugs to counter anxiety and depression.
We demand the right to change how we practice medicine and how we are paid,
so that we may adapt to the realities we are faced with, to be able to listen,
to work together and to try to go from treatment to healthcare.
The health insurance reform aggravated unequal access to treatment, and
forms part of this heightened social exclusion. We refuse to be complicit
with this injustice that requires sick people to pay more and more in order
to receive care. We know that they are in a situation of having to choose
between eating and going to the doctor.
This is unacceptable, which is also what this explosion of anger is telling
us.
We also know that this youth rebellion is not the work of “trash.” These
so-called thugs express themselves in the doctor’s office. We understand that
the violence is mainly self-destructive. It takes the form of drug use, and
like all risk-taking behaviour it springs from not having any hope of finding
a place in our society. As general practitioners, we are well placed to explain
to these young people how absurd and dangerous their behaviour is, but we
cannot deny that they are right to be angry.
At a time when the policies the government is choosing could make general
medicine disappear – and not only from the at-risk neighbourhoods – it is
the time to state, loud and clear, that we will not be able to escape from
this vicious cycle of violence without providing general practitioners and
other social service and healthcare workers with the necessary financial and
organizational resources to do their jobs.
Please note that the above text about about the
situation in the French suburbs comes from the Indymedia Paris website
and was translated by yours truly. I have a “fast and loose” translation philosophy,
meaning that when there is a choice between readability and the original
phraseology i tend to favour the former, provided that the meaning stays
the same.The original document can be seen in French.
This originally came from my blog - Sketchy Thoughts
- and is one of a number of pieces i wrote or translated regarding the
riots that rocked France in October and November 2005. To see the a complete
list of such posts, i suggest you check out the 2005 Riots In France page on the Kersplebedeb
site.