A Consultation
Poor Melanie. She is very sick! She is coughing. She is sneezing. She has a
headache. She has a fever. She has chills. She does not feel well at all. (She is sick
as….. She wants o call the doctor but it’s the weekend and her doctor doesn’t take
appointments on the weekend. The only solution is to call SOS Doctors.
SOS Doctors is a service which sends doctors to the home. A doctor arrives at
Melanie’s house to examine her. She listens to her chest, she takes her temperature.
She tells her that she has the flu. But it’s not serious. She is going to be better soon.
The doctor gives her a prescription. She prescribes antibiotics: three pills per day
for one week. Melanie will take one at each meal.
Melanie pays the doctor. But in France, the Social Security reimburses the doctors’
fees. That is to say the money that one gives to doctors. 80% of all the fees and
medical expenses are reimbursed by Social Security.
Culture and Health
Does culture influence health and medicine? Certainly. For example, in France,
everyone talks about their liver. The French often say, “My liver hurts”. In the US,
one never hears anyone say this. Why? Because in the US, a liver ailment is serious.
But when a French persons says his liver hurts, he means he has digestive trouble.
Nothing serious. He is perhaps under the weather today, but he will soon be back
on his feet!
In the US on the other hand, they talk a lot about allergies. Numerous Americans
suffer from allergies. The symptoms of an allergy resemble the symptoms of a cold.
You sneeze, and you often have a headache. An allergy is disagreeable, but it’s not
serious. In France, they speak less often about allergies. Why? Who knows?
Vive la difference!
Medical Services in France
In France, there are large hospitals with all the state of the art equipment necessary
for the practice of modern medicine. On can count more than 3500 establishments
for general care. There are 900 public hospital establishments and more than 2500
private clinics. Many of these clinics resemble hotes.
In France, they do a lot of medical and pharmaceutical research. It is at the Pasteur
Institute of Paris that Doctor Montagnier isolated the AIDS virus. Today at the
Pasteur institute, they continue to do research against this terrible disease.