Medical deserts: a bill passed in the Senate to increase the number of medical students

How can we have more doctors, when medical deserts are worsening in many areas? By taking a further step to further increase the number of medical students, the senators responded, adopting, on Wednesday, 18 June, a bill aimed at "improving access to care through territorialization and training"; even though the effects will only be noticeable in a decade, once the studies of these future practitioners have been completed.

The text, voted on in first reading in the National Assembly in December 2023, and then carried by Yannick Neuder – then deputy (Les Républicains, LR) of Isère, he is today Minister of Health –, provides, in its first article, to strengthen the consideration of the "health needs of the territory" to determine the number of students authorized to continue in medicine, that of "training capacities" only intervening on a "subsidiary basis" . That is to say an accentuated order of priority. The regional health agencies and the territorial health councils will be able, if they consider that the reception capacities are insufficient, to call on a university to "implement measures aimed at increasing them" .

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