Charity steps in for missing GPs

A CHARITY has stepped in to fill gaps in the healthcare system by offering free consultations in “medical desert” rural regions where there are few GPs.

Médecins du Monde (MDM) is setting up mobile clinics in places including Auvergne and Alsace and is asking for more volunteers for an expansion. During the election it has run a 2012, Votez Santé! campaign to get improvements to the French health system which, it says “is ill”.

MDM says medical deserts are a problem but a more pressing issue is that not all French people have access to healthcare – and those with the most pressing need often have the least access.

It has programmes in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Serbia but also does 35,000 free medical consultations a year in 29 towns and cities in France. It says 25% of the people it sees have come for help too late, 70% of under-six children are behind with their vaccinations, 68% of pregnant women do not have access to prenatal care and 85% have no health insurance.

MDM points the finger at unavoidable expenses which are not reimbursed and called for the CMU (couverture maladie universelle) free healthcover for those on low incomes to be revamped and for the financial threshold for access to the CMU-complémentaire (free top-up insurance) to be lowered to match the poverty threshold.