The gathering is scheduled for 10 a.m. in front of the Saint-Pierre medical faculty, before a procession to the South University Hospital. The walk will conclude with a time of testimonies and reflection to honor the memory of the young doctor and allow participants to express their experiences, several local media detail.
According to his parents, the initiative aims to remember who Alexander was, but also to “open a space for reflection” on the suffering experienced by medical students and caregivers within the hospital system. They are calling on citizens, students and health professionals to join the march.
A letter denouncing a “sick system”
In a message sent to the Imaz Press agency by his family, Alexandre Galaor asks that the cause of his death by suicide be revealed and the reasons for this action explained car “I’m tired of covering this sick system.”
In a long letter, the psychiatry intern recounts his journey and the vocation that led him to medicine, writing: “my career choice has always been the same: doctor for as long as I can remember”.
The young man talks about his projects and achievements in the second and third years of medicine, “probably (…) the two best of [s]for life ». But it also describes the progressive discovery of “the hell of the health system” with harsh working conditions.
He talks in particular about hospital pressure and the lack of staff, describing services where externs would be required to carry out numerous additional and demeaning tasks. “ This status of cheap labor (…) allows management not to hire”he denounces.
The young doctor explains that he went through a period of depression during his studies, which he tried to mask with his excellence in internship, “because appearance remains everything to me, I must appear impeccable”. He was also the victim of racism, according to his mother.
A structural problem
Alexandre finally believes, like many unions, that the suffering of students remains minimized at best, and invisible at worst. : “If we complain, we are weak, not made for that, it is a passion job after all”, he writes.
As a reminder, several surveys on the mental health of medical students show that between work overload, hierarchical pressure and budgetary constraints, 21% presented suicidal thoughts during the year and that 70% considered stopping their studies at least once a month.
https://www.whatsupdoc-lemag.fr/article/chu-de-tours-un-nouveau-suicide-dinterne-en-medecine-le-deuxieme-en-huit-mois
For the Indian Ocean interns’ union, which announced the death of Alexandre, the situation is all the more worrying in the overseas territories, faced with social, economic and territorial inequalities in medical studies.