Symbolic funerals, mins of silence, declarations of affection… lately, confronted with the erosion of the general public sanatorium, many caregivers have resorted to authentic varieties of mobilization that depict demise and love. A technique to remind us that care isn’t a commodity however a pillar of society.
Inadequate sources, workforce shortages, emergency violence, mattress closures {and professional} burnout of well being groups… caution indicators are multiplying in French public hospitals because the implementation of reforms associated with the “new public management”.
Remaining January, the ambulance on the sanatorium in Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) went on strike after the demise of 2 sufferers ready on stretchers. In Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhone), the similar month, a affected person looking ahead to a spot within the emergency room died sooner than he may just obtain remedy. On January 8, 2026, the Minister of Well being Stephanie Rist, for her phase, reported “tension in all emergency services”. Most of these details illustrate the topicality of the issue.
Alternatively, since 2019, confronted with such repeated scenarios, two collectives of well being employees – the Emergency Collective and the Clinic Collective – warn of the human penalties of those well being insurance policies in response to profitability, funding in public area, and social networks.
We carried out a four-year investigation into those two collectives and picked up texts, songs, clips, pictures, movies, drawings produced by way of the caregivers themselves or transmitted by way of those collectives on social networks. Of their calls for, caregivers mobilize demise and love as political languages to query our collective courting to care, public carrier, and team spirit.
Symbolically “kill” the emergency sanatorium
Coffins carried in the street, funeral processions, mins of silence arranged in entrance of structures: in the beginning look, those scenes may also be unexpected. Why symbolically “bury” a public sanatorium whilst caregivers combat to put it aside? For the reason that symbolism of demise acts like an electrical surprise. Via staging the demise of the sanatorium, caregivers search to boost consciousness: with no collective reaction, this crucial pillar of our society dangers disappearing. Those mourning rituals give visual shape to a gradual and frequently invisible procedure: the modern erosion of the general public well being carrier.
Loss of life additionally permits us to recall the most obvious that accounting good judgment has a tendency to disregard: the sanatorium is a crucial infrastructure. All of us rely on it, sooner or later or every other. On this sense, demise is not only the tip; it turns into a political language for expressing the urgency of motion.
Exposing caregiver vulnerability
The mobilization does now not worry simplest the sanatorium. Additionally they make visual the our bodies of those that paintings there. All the way through positive movements, caregivers simulate their very own demise in a public area, mendacity at the flooring, with a syringe symbolically pointed on the head. Others describe suffocation, to decry running stipulations that experience grow to be suffocating.
Those photographs are sturdy, now and again surprising. Alternatively, they discuss of a fact this is broadly documented in positive products and services: paintings overload, the lack to take a damage, the acceleration of time, stress of values, mental struggling, burnout, even suicide. Via exposing their vulnerability, caregivers damage with the heroic however bad symbol of caregivers pushed by way of a calling that transcends their physiological, mental, and human wishes.
With this, they remind that those that supply care will have to be safe and that, when the well being of caregivers deteriorates, the effects are borne by way of the sufferers.
Declaration of affection in a public sanatorium
Along with those depictions of demise, every other image runs in the course of the mobilization: love. Banners with the inscription “I love my hospital”, heart-shaped stickers at the partitions, letters despatched to the general public sanatorium as declarations of affection… Caregivers known as on electorate to specific their devotion to this establishment. There’s not anything naive about this love. It’s deeply political. Via stating their love for the general public sanatorium, the electorate verify that care can’t be lowered to a industrial carrier. They remind that the sanatorium embodies the values of team spirit, equality and a focus to essentially the most prone.
Credit score: Caroline Sault, Creator (No Reuse)
Love then turns into an act of resistance: to like a public sanatorium is to refuse to be controlled only consistent with the factors of profitability.
Collective duty
Those mobilizations define an ethics of existence and demise, by which care is noticed as a collective duty, in response to each public infrastructure and human family members that acknowledge our vulnerability and our common interdependence. The gestures of affection, team spirit and compassion highlighted within the mobilizations remind us that being concerned is not only a technical act, however a human courting in response to consideration to others.
The ethics of existence and demise pondered in those mobilizations additionally is composed of constructing care a public topic. This is, to jointly dedicate to creating visual what in most cases turns out invisible: prone our bodies, undignified scenarios, the modern demise of public hospitals.
The general public sanatorium disaster is not only a control downside. It poses a basic query: what position can we wish to give care in our society? Will we settle for that some lives are price lower than others, because of loss of sources? Or can we imagine care as a not unusual excellent, which will have to be safe jointly?
Via mobilizing demise and love, caregivers invite society to take into accounts the stipulations essential for a existence price residing and what we’re keen to decide to with a purpose to maintain the ones stipulations.
