On the eve of a national strike by about three quarters of French doctors, 15,000 nurses marched through the streets of Paris yesterday in protest at deteriorating pay and working conditions.
"Best not be ill today or tomorrow - but if you are, here's where to go," the newspaper Le Parisien said, offering its readers tips on where to get treatment during a week of industrial action which seems likely to cripple France's much-vaunted health service.
Yesterday's strike followed a walkout by hospital ancillary staff on Monday which left only emergency wards operating normally. About 77% of family doctors and 56% of specialists have said they will close their surgeries today for a national protest dubbed "the Day without Docs".
In the run-up to the presidential and parliamentary elections this spring, the strikes - called by four of the five main healthcare unions - could seriously damage the chances of the prime minister, Lionel Jospin, who is expected to be the Socialists' candidate for the presidency.
"There is a real feeling of despair across the sector," Michel Chassang of the doctors' union Unof said. "We do not necessarily want more pay, but we do need more money to allow us to provide the standard of healthcare the French people have a right to expect."
The ancillary staff are striking over the introduction of the 35-hour working week, a key plank in Mr Jospin's 1997 manifesto, which they say has left them disastrously short-staffed, since no extra money has been made available to take on more people.
The nurses want a "substantial" improvement in their basic pay, and the GPs and specialists are demanding a 15% to 20% increase in their consultancy and call-out fees, which have been unchanged for several years.
The authorities say today's national day of action will put a huge strain on the emergency services, which are already struggling to cope, with fewer staff, with national epidemics of influenza and bronchitis. Patients have been told to call the emergency ambulance service only as the very last resort.
Public support for the healthcare workers' unprecedented campaign seems to be widespread. Long proud of a health service rated the best in the world by the World Health Organisation, the French have been shocked this week by the sight of exhausted medical staff, patients left in hospital corridors for hours, and waiting-rooms bulging with the sick.
But with public spending restricted by the commitments it made to join the European single currency, the government has little spare cash with which to address the sector's grievances. The service is already expensive by international standards and expenditure rose well above government targets last year.
Embarrassingly, the strikes coincide with the highly publicised arrival of the first British NHS patients sent abroad in an attempt to reduce the one million people waiting for routine operations. They are being treated in a private clinic in Lille and are unlikely to be affected.
