The Socialist mayor of Marmande published a deliberately provocative order forbidding people from falling ill in his town to draw attention to service cuts and financial troubles at the local hospital.
Mayor Joël Hocquelet issued a non-binding, intentionally absurd decree saying "it is forbidden for anyone to be ill on the territory of Marmande" to spotlight healthcare access problems.
Marmande-Tonneins Intercommunal Hospital is under temporary administration and faces potential loss of specialties in early 2027, which could force patients to travel about 95 km to Agen.
Joël Hocquelet, Socialist mayor of Marmande in Lot-et-Garonne, published a deliberately provocative decree declaring that "it is forbidden for anyone to be ill on the territory of Marmande." The order has no legal force and was described by the mayor himself as "absurd." Its purpose was to draw attention to serious local problems accessing healthcare.
Hospital has been under temporary administration by the regional health authority (ARS) since January due to severe financial difficulties. Mocquelet said the hospital could lose some medical specialties at the start of 2027 as services are considered for centralisation at the larger hospital in Agen-Nérac, the main establishment in the Lot-et-Garonne regional hospital group.
The mayor, a former GP and president of the hospital supervisory board (a role he alternates with the mayor of nearby Tonneins), said his goal was to "sound the alarm" with national policymakers about deteriorating healthcare access outside France's largest cities and the reality of so-called medical deserts.
Local reporting and the mayor name specialties that could be transferred: cardiology, digestive medicine and diabetology. If those services move to Agen, residents of Marmande—about 95 kilometres away—could face long journeys for treatment. The town's hospital currently serves approximately 110,000 people.
Hocquelet warned that further cuts might reduce the hospital to "a shell of itself," potentially affecting full emergency coverage and services such as the laboratory. He said he is not against hospitals sharing resources or cooperating, but that there are limits to how far centralisation can go without degrading care locally.
The decree invites anyone feeling an illness coming on to "take the necessary steps to postpone it to a later date," depending on appointment availability at the Marmande-Tonneins hospital. The phrasing is deliberately absurd to force attention onto a practical problem: residents already struggle to find a GP, and losing specialties will make the area less attractive to new residents.
The mayor framed the issue as both a healthcare problem and a regional development problem: access to local services affects the town's ability to attract and retain population.
The mayor's mock decree is a political gesture designed to raise public and national awareness of concrete risks to local healthcare: a financially troubled hospital, potential loss of specialties, long travel distances for treatment, and growing difficulty finding local GPs. The decree itself has no legal effect but aims to accelerate attention and action before service changes take effect in 2027.
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