No-go for doctors in Paris suburbs

Jon Henley in Paris
Tuesday April 24, 2001
The Guardian

Ever-mounting levels of suburban violence are turning France's big-city housing estates into no-go areas for ambulances, doctors and even dispensing chemists, according to figures released yesterday.

Sparking fears that the trend will soon deprive those that most need it of even the most basic medical attention, the figures showed that 40% of chemists in the Paris suburbs suffered break-ins or hold-ups last year, and more than 15% of doctors were physically attacked - half of them in their consulting rooms.

"Youths have begun turning their attention from police, firemen and other uniformed representatives of the state to medical professionals," said a police official in Seine Saint-Denis north of Paris, where 50 armed attacks on pharmacies have been reported since January.

"It's a worrying development, not only for the medical professionals concerned but for the elderly and the unwell in these areas."

Last week ambulance crews took the exceptional step of boycotting the high-rise Pierre-Collinet estate outside the northern town of Meaux after their colleagues were subjected to a string of violent attacks - including one with teargas - in the past fortnight.

In Trappes, also just outside Paris, doctors now make their rounds accompanied by an armed policemen. One doctor in the run-down suburb of Val-Fourré has hired bodyguards from among the local unemployed, and the 120 doctors and specialists practising in Colombes have joined forces to equip their premises with steel shutters, closed-circuit TV and delayed-action locks between waiting room and surgery.

Patrick Zeitoun, head of the Paris region pharmacists' association, said not only had the number of attacks increased, the level of violence had too. "Drug addicts used to insult us because we wouldn't give them methadone without a prescription. Now they come armed with a shotgun."

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2001