International. Public hospitals in Paris are set to be equipped with 1,500 new video surveillance cameras in an effort to combat violence faced by staff and prevent damage to valuable medical equipment.
The number of cameras will increase by 40 percent over the next three years to deal with the overwhelming incidents of aggression faced by people working in the French capital's 39 public hospitals and damage to hospital resources.
"We are taking the next step with video surveillance," Martin Hirsch, director of the city's hospital authority, AP-HP, told Le Parisien.
Hirsch said the cameras would cost about 30 million euros or "the equivalent of a small building."
In 2016, there were 4,302 alleged "undesirable situations" in Paris' public hospitals, according to a study by France's National Observatory on Violence in Health Care (ONVS). That compares to 3,282 in 2015.
About half of these situations involved violence or insults against staff members, while the other half involved damage to the hospital itself, including the destruction of valuable medical equipment.
According to the AP-HP, the cameras will function as a visible preventative measure, help find and identify the people behind the crimes and help security guards intervene more quickly in the event of a fight.
These cameras will only be installed in passages and waiting rooms; it's not about having cameras in the hallways where you often tend to people in beds.
There are also plans "before the summer" to test advanced cameras that are capable of "detecting suspicious fights and packages, as well as reacting to a patient's fall or disappearance, if they suffer from Alzheimer's, for example," Hirsch said.
According to the head of AP-HP, it will be the first time that these cameras, currently used mainly in airports, are tested in the field of health.
