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20 May 2020updated 06 Oct 2020 9:45am

France launches “radical“ shake up of entire healthcare system in light of coronavirus failings

By Samuel Horti

France will transform its entire health service with “radical measures” to ensure staff are no longer underpaid and overworked, the country’s health minister has promised.

The government will launch a national consultation on Monday, 25 May, and Olivier Véran promised that “nothing will be as it was before”. He admitted the government had not acted “quickly or strongly enough” to reform the health service in recent years, and that the coronavirus pandemic had demonstrated the need for a “health system that was renewed and rearmed and capable of dealing with all risks, all threats”.

The reform would include pay rises for nurses and measures to combat fatigue among the workforce, he said.

The announcement came after President Emmanuel Macron pledged to overhaul the “salaries, careers, speciality training and professional situation” in hospitals and state nursing homes, and to agree a new funding system for the health service.

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