Health Minister Yannick Neuder unveiled on Friday the 151 red zones, mainly in the center and southwest of France outside the coast, which will benefit from the support of general practitioners (GPs) from September, for up to two days per month, to combat medical deserts.
With this map, which identifies 151 priority inter-municipal areas for access to care, "we are not addressing medical deserts," since they affect "87% of the country," the minister said in an interview on BFMTV. But "it's a first step" that will benefit more than 2.5 million patients, he added.
Unsurprisingly, in a diagonal from the northeast, central France and the southwest, excluding the coast, have the most red zones on the ministry's map. While overseas, French Guiana and Mayotte are the worst off. This was already evident in the 2025 Medical Demographic Atlas published in March by the French Medical Association.
The Ministry of Health's division is the result of work "carried out with prefects, regional health agencies, local elected officials, and also health professionals, to identify particularly deprived areas," Mr. Neuder explained.
According to him, it allows us to "identify and provoke collective solidarity in these territories, a collective commitment on September 1st."
– “Volunteers” –
On April 25, a government measure was adopted to establish a "mandatory territorial solidarity mission," requiring all doctors practicing in well-supplied areas to "project" themselves into priority areas for up to two days per month.
"We're going to encourage doctors, and then we also have to fine-tune the system, find the places, the medical centers, the offices that are available to welcome patients," Mr. Neuder explained.
"Pending the adoption of the legislative provisions currently being examined by Parliament, this measure will allow all volunteer general practitioners to come and strengthen, for part of their time, the provision of care in 151 so-called 'red zones'," we can read in the press release from the Ministry of Health.
The word "volunteers" is important for doctors, because François Bayrou's entourage mentioned at the end of April financial compensation for practitioners who leave, while "doctors who refuse would be penalized."
"It must not be the idea of constraint, of obligation," Agnès Giannotti, president of Médecins Généralistes (MG France, the majority among liberals), insisted to AFP at the end of April.
- " Random " -
In a press release issued by Socialist MP Guillaume Garot, a cross-party group of 250 parliamentarians highlighted "numerous questions" remaining with this system: "availability of doctors practicing near red zones, that is to say in areas already under great strain", "currently optional – therefore random – nature", and "above all, lack of regular monitoring of patients by the same practitioner".
For these elected officials, it is "according to the government's own admission, a device intended to deal with the emergency" which "can in no way replace substantive responses."
Guillaume Garot is behind a bill, led by this cross-party group, aimed at regulating the establishment of doctors to combat medical deserts, which was adopted in early May by the National Assembly. Before setting up, independent or salaried doctors would have to seek approval from the Regional Health Agency. This would be a legal right in an area lacking healthcare professionals, but in more well-equipped areas, a doctor would only be able to set up when another doctor leaves.
The cross-party group is once again calling for this proposal to be "included as soon as possible" on the Senate agenda.
This is a casus belli for many doctors, particularly medical students and interns, who demonstrated at the end of April.
Yannick Neuder, while welcoming the work of the group of deputies, had reiterated his opposition to this measure at the time of the vote in the Assembly.
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