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HEALTH

How to get medical help over the holidays in France

If you're in France on a public holiday - or in August when many services close down - here is what to do if you need to access medical care.

Published: 22 December 2023 15:10 CET
Updated: 29 December 2023 09:27 CET
How to get medical help over the holidays in France
A woman arrives in a medical center "SOS medecins" in Montpellier, France (Photo by Pascal GUYOT / AFP)

Health issues are stressful in any country, but they can be even more anxiety-inducing if you are on holiday and do not speak the language or are not familiar with the country’s health system.

Many services close on public holidays (of which France has 11 per year) and in August you may find that doctors also take a break and close their cabinets for a couple of weeks.

If you experience a medical issue during a holiday period, start by determining whether it is an emergency or not.

Emergencies

For a major medical event you should either visit a hospital urgences (Emergency Room) or call an ambulance.

You can report anything by calling 112, the European general emergency phone number, and they will direct you to the relevant services. While this is not guaranteed, if you do not speak French you might be more likely to find an English-speaker by calling 112 than other services.

If you are hearing impaired there is an SMS service on 114.

Call 15 to alert the SAMU (service d’aide médicale urgente) to critical health and medical situations which require urgent medical attention such as severe chest pain, breathing difficulties, hemorrhage, coma, extreme burns or intoxication.

Call 18 if someone’s life is in danger. This number connects to the fire services (Sapeurs Pompiers) who provide rapid medical intervention and rescue.

You can consult our a list of what to say once you get on the phone with someone, if you do not feel confident in your French.

READ MORE: Emergency in France: Who to call and what to say

Non-emergencies

If your problem is not quite an emergency but still something that you need help with, there are several options available to everyone in France – including French residents, tourists and second-home owners.

Here are a few options:

SOS Médecins 

This service covers ‘non-life-threatening urgent consultations’ and will connect you with a general practitioner, available 24/7 – even on public holidays, like Christmas or New Year.

You can use it if you’re a visitor to France, you’re on holiday in a different part of France, you’re not yet registered with a doctor or simply if your own doctor is not available (either because it’s out of normal hours or your doctor is on holiday).

SOS Médecins is most known for their house-calls, as they will come directly to your home to give you a consultation. However you can also visit their local office or request a téléconsultation (online appointment). In either case, the person you see is a doctor and they will be able to diagnose you and prescribe medication, as needed. 

The SOS Médecins website gives three options: make an appointment by calling (the number is 3624), make an appointment online, or walk-in for a consultation (hours will vary for this depending on the location). You may need to first create an account when booking online.

When making your appointment, you can request an English speaking doctor, but it is not guaranteed you will get one. 

When calling to make the appointment, you will need to know your département number, your phone number, the patient’s first and last name, the exact address (including the building code, floor, and any other relevant apartment-specific information), the reason for the call, and the age of the patient.

Cost – SOS Médecins varies in price depending on the time of day and location (whether the consultation is at the centre or at your home). For a house-call on holidays, weekends, and nights you can expect the fee to range between €56.50 to €86, which may be in part reimbursable by Assurance Maladie if you are registered in the French medical system.

Maisons Médicales de Gardes

These are community health centres that are intended to stay open after working hours and on the weekends. They are intended to ease the burden on emergency room by offering a place for people with non-life threatening emergencies to go outside of normal operating hours.

You can look online to see the closest Maison Médicale to you (you can also search ‘Maison Médicale de Garde + your town/city/département) or you can call your regular doctor and listen to their voice machine – usually they will list your after-hours options. For more information, you can visit this website.

Before walking up to the centre, you can call to allow the operator to assess your situation and give you a recommendation regarding whether you need emergency treatment or whether you can be treated at the Maison Médicale.

Cost – you can expect to pay between €26.50 to €59.50.

Pharmacy

Over public holidays, pharmacies operate a rota system to ensure that at least one is open in each area – you can find the nearest by doing a Google search for ‘pharmacie de garde‘ plus the name of your town. You can also use the locator tool on this website.

Pharmacists in France are highly qualified (it takes between five and seven years to complete the training) and by law all pharmacies must have at least one qualified pharmacist on the premises.

Although they cannot prescribe medication, you can go to a pharmacy with a minor medical problem, to ask advice or for treatment for less serious injuries, or to get over-the-counter medication such as cough syrup or painkillers. You can visit on a walk-in basis and there is no need for an appointment.

READ MORE: More than prescriptions: 11 things you can do at a French pharmacy

If the pharmacist cannot treat you, they will tell you whether you need further assistance from a doctor or whether your medical issue is urgent enough to warrant an ambulance or trip to the hospital.

If you suspect you have Covid-19, you can get a test at a pharmacy. For strep throat or tonsilitis (une angine), you can ask for a rapid test (TROD or Test Rapide d’Orientation Diagnostique) at any pharmacy.

If it is a positive result for bacterial strep, then you’ll be referred back to a primary care doctor in order to get a prescription for antibiotics. This test is covered by Assurance Maladie if you are registered in the French system.

The SOS Médecins website may also have a locator tool, depending on the region you are in. For example, this is available on the Paris version.

Cost – Seeking the assistance of a pharmacist is free, but if they recommend medication or treatment, you will likely have to pay, although some treatment types are reimbursed if you are registered in the French health system. 

Make a doctor appointment

Oftentimes, foreigners or tourists do not think they can make an appointment with a general practitioner in France if they do not have a carte vitale or are not registered in the French healthcare system.

In fact, anyone can make an appointment to see a French doctor, there is no need to be registered with them. One of the easiest ways to do this is by going to the website Doctolib and signing up for an appointment.

On Doctolib, you can see the medical professional’s qualifications and languages spoken, so you can filter based on the doctor’s English abilities. However, this should be taken with a grain of salt because not every medical professional with English listed on their Doctolib page speaks fluent English. 

On the Doctolib website, you can set a preference for Aujourd’hui (today) or Dans les prochains trois jours (In the next three days). You can also set your motif de consultation (type of consultation) to an online appointment, if you are not looking to make the trip to the doctor’s office (not all doctors offer these, and some only offer it for follow-ups).

READ MORE: How to use: French medical website Doctolib

Similarly, there are other websites that help you make doctors appointments in France, like the health ministry approved site ‘LeMedecin.Fr’.

This website also has a feature where you can take an immediate online consultation with whatever doctor is available at that moment. By clicking ‘Consultez en vidéo maintenant’ you will be connected to the next doctor who is free. This option may involve an additional charge between €5-10 on top of the price of the consultation, and you will be expected to pay when booking.

If you have any trouble with either of these websites, you can go through the list of registered generalists per département on the ‘Ameli’ website. If you use this option, you will need to call the doctor to see if they are open or available for appointments.

Cost – Everyone who visits a doctor (even online) in France is expected to pay, at least the standard rate of €26.50. If you are registered in the French medical system part of the cost will be reimbursed through your carte vitale.

If you are a tourist or second-home owner you may be able to claim the cost back on your health or travel insurance, depending on the policy.

If you are still in the process of registering for your carte vitale be sure to ask for a feuille de soins – this is basically a receipt, and when you get the card you can claim back medical costs incurred while you waited using the feuille de soins.

When booking the appointment, check to see whether the physician is ‘Secteur 1’ or ‘Secteur 2’ – this will determine if they are allowed to charge additional fees. A sectuer 1 doctor must apply the basic rate set out by the medication convention. For a GP, the fixed price is €26.50.

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CULTURE

How many of France’s ’10 most iconic women’ can you name?

Ten monumental golden statues representing French women from the worlds of art, literature, sport and politics are shortly to go on display in Paris - but how many of these famous names do you recognise?

Published: 18 September 2024 15:34 CEST
How many of France's '10 most iconic women' can you name?

They were one of the early highlights of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris this summer, emerging from the River Seine near the Alexandre-III bridge as the flotilla of boats carrying international athletes passed.

Now golden status of the 10 famous women have been made and are on display in Cour d’honneur of the French National Assembly until October 5th, while more permanent homes for them are discussed. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo hopes to install them along rue de La Chapelle in the 18th arrondissement.

It will go some way towards closing that statuery gap – there are currently around 260 statues of men in the French capital, and just 40 women.

This temporary free exhibition will enable visitors to admire these polymer resin sculptures, created by 3D printing and designed to withstand the elements, by registering in advance on the Assemblée nationale website.

But, who are the women they celebrate and honour? Some might be familiar to international readers while others are barely known outside France.

Christine de Pizan (1364-1431) 

The oldest of the inspirational women remembered at the Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony by some distance.

De Pizan was France’s first woman of letters, the first woman to earn a living as a writer. 

She started her career in the court of King Charles VI, following the deaths of her father and husband in rapid succession, leaving the family – she had three children – without a traditional source of income.

Her works were forgotten for several centuries, but resurfaced in the 1980s thanks to the rise of feminist studies – and, today, she is revered as one of history’s earliest feminists. Her most famous work, La cité des dames (The City of Ladies), clinically dismantles patriarchal discrimination and misogyny.

Jeanne Barret (1740-1807)

Explorer and botanist Barret was born into poverty in rural Burgundy – and went on to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, while working as a ‘valet’ to doctor and botanist Philibert Commerson. 

At the time, the French navy banned women from their vessels, so she had to undertake the journey around the world in disguise, and was known as Jean. Her tireless work – she took charge of an expedition in Brazil when Commerson was unfit to work – earned her the respect of the crew and the expedition’s captain Louis-Antoine de Bougainville.

She and Commerson kept her true identity – and their relationship – secret for a year. In fact, such was his respect for her that Bougainville, after whom the botanist had named a plant, later wrote to King Louis XVI and requested that she be honoured with the title femme extraordinaire.

Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793)

Playwright, activist, abolitionist, disheartened revolutionary – feminist icon de Gouges is best known for her  Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne (Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen), written in scathing response to the Revolutionary Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen and demanding full legal, political and social assimilation of women.

She also wrote in favour of the abolition of slavery, and was initially in favour of the 1789 Revolution – but grew disenchanted by the lack of progress of women’s rights in its aftermath. 

De Gouges was executed by guillotine in 1793, after writing repeated literary attacks on the regime and leader Maximilien Robespierre.

Louise Michel (1830-1905)

If ever you see anarchists raise a black flag during a protest, remember Louise Michel – the teacher, anarchist and leading light of the Paris Commune, a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris from 18th March to 28th May, 1871.

She was transported to Nouvelle-Caledonie in punishment for her role in the Commune. There, she took up the plight of the indigenous Kanak people, taking their side in a revolt in 1878. 

In 1880, amnesty was granted to those who had participated in the Paris Commune. Michel returned to Paris, her revolutionary passion undiminished. And she proudly waved a black flag at a jobless demonstration in Paris in March 1883 – it is, historians say, the first use of the modern anarchists’ symbol.

Alice Guy (1873-1968)

French cinema remembers the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis. It remembers the visionary Georges Méliès, and early directors Marcel Pagnol and Jean Renoir – the son of the artist. And it honours Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer. The list of male cineastes in France is long.

Alice Guy routinely gets lost in the shuffle. She shouldn’t. She was the first woman to direct a film – La Fée aux choux in 1896; one of the first to make a movie with a distinct narrative; and, for a decade between 1896 to 1906, was probably the only female filmmaker in the world.

Guy was a cinema pioneer in many ways. She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sync-sound system, colour-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects. 

Her Hollywood film A Fool and His Money – made with a wholly African-American cast – is considered to have historical and aesthetic significance and is preserved at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute.

And her 1906 33-minute film La vie du Christ, which tells the story of Jesus Christ in 25 tableaux based on the gospels, is sometimes cited as the first ‘epic’ movie. As was the case with many Guy  films, it was for a long time wrongly attributed to Victorin Jasset – her assistant in charge of directing exterior scenes and managing the extras.

Alice Milliat (1884-1957)

There’s still a vast distance to travel, but women’s sport might not even be where it is today without Milliat. 

While noted misogynist Pierre de Coubertin – he once famously said that a woman’s role at the Olympic Games should be to crown the winners – gets all the Olympic glory, Milliat was responsible for getting the men-only club to, finally, allow women to compete.

She founded the Fédération Française Sportive Féminine in 1917. She helped organise the 1922 Women’s World Games – which were originally called the Jeux Olympiques Féminins and which ran for four editions until 1934, and which prompted the International Olympic Committee to slowly and belatedly allow female competition.

She also managed a French women’s association football team that toured the United Kingdom in 1920. In 2021, a commemorative statue of Milliat was unveiled at the French Olympic Committee’s headquarters in Paris.

Paulette Nardal (1896-1985)

Journalist, activist, woman of letters and pioneer of ‘black intellectualism’, Nardal, who was born in Martinique, was also the first black woman to study at the Sorbonne.

In October 1931, she founded the journal La Revue du Monde Noir (Review of the Black World) with her sisters; French novelist Louis Jean Finot; Haitian scholar Léo Sajous; and Clara W Shepard, an African-American teacher and translator. 

On her return to Martinique in 1944, Nardal founded Le Rassemblement féminin. Le Rassemblement féminin, one of two feminist organisations at the time whose goals were to increase the number of women who voted in the 1945 elections.

Then, from 1946 to 1948 Nardal was a delegate to the United Nations, working with both the UN Department for Non-Autonomous Territories and the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

De Beauvoir’s 1949 work The Second Sex is considered a “trailblazing work in feminist philosophy”, and is a foundation work of modern feminism. 

But she considered herself a writer rather than a philosopher. She won the 1954 Prix Goncourt, the 1975 Jerusalem Prize, and the 1978 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1961, 1969 and 1973.

More controversially, she lost a teaching job amid accusations of inappropriate behaviour and she and long-time partner Jean-Paul Sartre campaigned for the release of people convicted of child sex offences.

Simone Veil (1927-2017)

Simone Veil survived Auschwitz and later Bergen-Belsen and went on to become one of France’s most respected politicians, steering through landmark laws to liberalise contraception and abortion.

She is best known for leading the successful campaign to legalise abortion in France – despite vicious abuse and threats – as the country’s first female minister of health in 1975. 

Veil later became the first female president of the European Parliament, where she served for three years, before returning to work for the French government again.

She was given an honorary damehood from the British government, and awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion D’Honneur in France. She died in 2017, and became just the fourth women to be interred in the Parthenon, after scientist Marie Curie, and two resistance fighters Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz and Germaine Tillion.

In 2021, Josephine Baker was also honoured at the Parthenon, nearly half a century after her death.

Gisèle Halimi (1927-2020)

“Politics is too serious a matter to be left to men alone.” Tunisian-born lawyer, feminist activist and co-founder of equality movement Choisir la cause des femmes said that in 1978. 

In early 1972, a year after Choisir was founded, Halimi successfully defended a teenager who was on trial for illegally aborting a pregnancy after she had been raped in the Parisian suburb of Bobigny.

The teenager’s mother and three others were also charged with conspiring to commit the illegal abortion.

It was a landmark case that paved the way for Simone Veil to persuade France’s parliament to legalise abortions in France two years later.

In 1981, Halimi was elected as an MP, where she was a vociferous campaigner for the abolition of the death penalty, and tabled bills promoting women’s rights.

Four years later, she was appointed Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of France to UNESCO, and, in 1989, she was appointed special advisor to the French delegation to the UN General Assembly in New York.

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