PARIS – French doctors faced off with President Emmanuel Macron at a leading Paris hospital Friday, demanding more investment and a rethink of the country's once-renowned public health system that found itself quickly overwhelmed by tens of thousands of virus patients.
Macron acknowledged mistakes in reforming the national hospital system, which has faced years of cost cuts, leaving medical facilities in one of the world's richest countries short of staff, masks and breathing machines needed to fight the virus crisis. “For months I was asking for equipment, and we had only three days to fight against the virus," Martin Hirsch, head of the Paris hospital network, told Macron.