Our nearest medical centre in Tuchan is under threat of closure. It’s closure would be a major loss for the Canton of Tuchan.

Rural remote areas such as ours are already purely served at the level of general services, from telecoms, education, aid for the elderly and general administration. Kids have to be shipped long distances daily to attend college, when I am on the road to go to the markets at 6am in the morning the teenagers are already up waiting for the buses to ship them off to Lezignan Corbieres and beyond, and they get back in the evening with their home work still to do. Any specialist health care requires visit to Perpignan, Narbonne even Montpellier. Our telecoms system breaks down regularly and is slowly repaired, just ask Orange why I haven’t had a fixed line since February. And as for dealing with the French state our tax centre is in Narbonne and the Prefecture is in Carcassonne. MSA the agricultural social service is split between Carcassonne and Perpignan. Every thing requires journeys of betwen two and three hours there and back again. Which is why a viist to anywhere usually entails about doing five or six things at any one go so that the diesel costs are shared. But it does mean descending to the plains takes up a large chunk of a day.

We do have a great air ambulance out of Perpignan that works with our local, volunteer fire brigade, and gets people to the emergency in super fast time, they saved the life of my friend Nicola when his strimmer explodes and almost cut off his foot.

We also have the Tuchan medical centre, which was one of the first of it’s type in the area, it brings together our Doctor, a dentist, district nurses and kinos, and has a pharmacy attached so you can come out of the Doctor’s and get your medicines straight away. It is a great service, and Doctor Sanchez, a young Spanish Doctor is a real asset to our canton, not only that she saved my life three years ago when I thought I had a bad flu but really had a failing aortic valve in my heart.

For the last four years she has been covering the Canton of Tuchan by herself and has not had a holiday for over a year. No French Doctor is interested in joining her, the demands of such a rural community just do not appeal. But they have found a Doctor willing to work alongside Dr Sanchez, for the last four years she has been working in the CHU in Barcelona, she has the Spanish equivalent of general practitioner, for the same medical school as Dr Sanchez. She is a naturalized French citizen.  But her first medical qualification was in her home country of Venezuela. For reasons that defy comprehension the Ordre des médecins de l’Aude have decided that her qualifications should not be recognized here in France, they don’t get the final say, Paris does, but having a unfavourable opinion from the Department Doctor’s order does not help. Dr Sanchez needs help, she cannot continue to cover the Canton adequately all by herself, if she does not get hjelp than she has no option but to quit the medical centre and set up her own practice with a much reduced service, she is a human being after all not a machine, she has a young family and the right to some quality of life.

For news on the campaign to save the Tuchan Medical centre, and get a second Doctor there is a Facebook Group here

 SANTE EN DANGER CORBIERES.

For more information on what is going on, in French here is the article from the local newpaper

Aude : le désert médical pourrait s’agrandir le 1er septembre prochain à Tuchan