Health Minister Catherine Vautrin inaugurated a mobile hospital on Saturday a stone's throw from the Champs-Elysees, which will allow patients to be treated during the Olympic Games, including in the event of an exceptional health situation.
Unfolded from a container, the white metal structure aligns six boxes, perched on blocks, about fifty meters from the Champs-Elysees roundabout. It offers a completely autonomous solution to deal with both the minor discomfort of a spectator and the emergency of resuscitation.
Inside, the succession of air-conditioned boxes can accommodate up to three patients in absolute emergency, with two resuscitation boxes, and five patients in relative emergency.
A battalion of ambulances from the Samu and the Smur, some of which come from the provinces, are stationed outside to transport patients to Parisian hospitals if necessary.
This system, implemented by the Samu, should make it possible to "respond to emergencies that could occur when we have as many visitors as we have on the occasion" of the Games, declared the minister. She mentioned both the care of "patients in absolute emergency with resuscitation capacity" and that of "needs relating to general medicine".
Mrs Vautrin welcomed the "mobilization of all health services", but not only, with "joint work by first responders, hospital staff and police services", as well as that of associations such as the Red Cross.
Alongside him, Professor Pierre Carli, mission officer for the Olympic and Paralympic Games at the Ministry of Health, noted that this is the "first deployment of a system of such magnitude in the centre of Paris".
Its installation near public gathering places for the Olympic Games is one of the lessons learned from the 2015 attacks in Paris and Saint-Denis. "Proximity counts enormously, as does the speed of intervention and access to the hospital in the best specialized services that are around us, at a short distance," explained Professor Carli.
The mobile hospital, called SHELTER, is a "station in the heart of the place where something serious can happen," he added.
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