Against medical deserts: Médecins solidaires, the association that aims to treat rural areas

Dr. Clémentine Ariot is halfway through her mission – three days out of six – in Charenton-du-Cher (Cher), and she hasn't yet found the time to tour this large town of a thousand inhabitants. Consultations have been taking place at a rate of around twenty per day since she saw the first patients on Monday, May 19, in the former village doctor's office, which the municipality has converted into a health center. She will leave the following Saturday ( "already..." ), she says, to return to her usual place of practice, Gières (Isère), a four-hour drive away.

First, she will have handed over the keys to the practice to her successor, a general practitioner like her. He will do the same a week later with another doctor… “This turnover is tense, but it’s also stimulating to feel engaged in a process of “reaching out,” of solidarity with patients,” reports the 38-year-old doctor. This type of mission gives meaning to our profession.”

In the multi-professional health center where she usually works, on the outskirts of Grenoble, there are seven general practitioners, as well as a pediatrician, a physiotherapist, a midwife, a speech therapist, a podiatrist and a nurse working together. These are "rather comfortable" working conditions, she concedes. In the town in the south of Cher where she volunteered, the health indicators are flashing red: with an aging population, the last general practitioner retiring in the summer of 2023, and a number of chronically ill people without a primary care physician approaching 10%, the area ticks all the boxes for a medical desert.

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