Mayor in south-western France bans local residents from getting sick
Yes, you read that right – a mayor in southwest France has issued an order “banning” people from getting sick in his town. The elected official said his “absurd” move was for a good cause.
Joël Hocquelet, the Socialist mayor of Marmande in the Lot-et-Garonne département in southwestern France, recently published a deliberately provocative decree stating that “it is forbidden for anyone to be ill on the territory of Marmande”.
The mayor said the admittedly “absurd” measure was intended to highlight the “very real difficulties accessing healthcare” in the area. The decree, obviously, has no legal force.
The joke order goes on to tell anyone who feels an illness coming on to “take the necessary steps to postpone it to a later date”, depending on the availability of medical appointments at the Marmande-Tonneins Intercommunal Hospital.
But beyond the joke is a serious concern about the future of the hospital, which has been under temporary administration by France’s regional health authority, the ARS, since January because of its severe financial difficulties.
Furthermore, the hospital could lose some of its medical specialities at the start of 2027, with services potentially being centralised at the hospital in Agen-Nérac – the main establishment within the Lot-et-Garonne regional hospital group.
In other words, this could mean that some services currently provided in Marmande would instead only be available at the larger hospital in Agen.
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Meanwhile, the Marmande-Tonneins hospital serves 110,000 people and the mayor fears that transferring specialities such as cardiology, digestive medicine and diabetology to Agen could significantly reduce the healthcare available locally. Agen is around 95 kilometres away from Marmande, meaning residents could face long journeys for treatment.
“The risk is that we end up with a reduced healthcare offering and a hospital that becomes a shell of itself, even though it is at the centre of an important area,” Hocquelet told regional media France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
Hocquelet, who is himself a former GP, said further cuts could eventually mean that the hospital would no longer provide a full emergency service and could lose services such as its laboratory.
The mayor also said he was not opposed to hospitals cooperating or sharing resources, but argued that there were limits to how far services could be centralised.
The mayor said he wanted his unusual decree to “sound the alarm” among national policymakers about the state of healthcare outside France’s largest cities to combat the reality of medical deserts.
The issue is also important for the town’s ability to attract new residents, he said, as newcomers can already struggle to find a GP.
Hocquelet is president of the supervisory board of the Marmande hospital, alternating the role with the mayor of nearby Tonneins.
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