People wearing face masks walk past the Trocadero Place near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, Oct. 23, 2020.(Photo: Xinhua)

Health workers demonstrated in cities across France on Tuesday to demand higher pay and more staff for services stretched to the breaking point, just days before the country votes in parliamentary elections.

Although recently reelected President Emmanuel Macron has ordered a probe into which emergency units need immediate help, people in the sector warn there is no time to lose.

"Not a single department is spared, our public hospitals are in the process of dying for lack of resources," said Pierre Wach, head of the CGT, a prominent trade union, in the eastern city of Strasbourg.

Protests began at hospitals on Tuesday morning and continued at the health ministry in Paris in the afternoon, where staff brandished placards with messages such as "Hire more and pay us more, it's urgent!"

But numbers participating were lower than hoped, at between 200 and 300 in the capital and similar figures in cities including Grenoble, Nantes, Toulouse and Bordeaux.

"It's been a total mess for years and we're fed up with it. Our working conditions are atrocious and patients are suffering because of it," said Ronan Treguer, a child psychiatric nurse in Nantes.

"I love my profession, but it's hard to stay motivated because we can't do it properly anymore," said Nathalie Niort, a nurse demonstrating outside the hospital in Clermont-Ferrand.

Casualty workers' group Samu-Urgences de France found in a May survey that at least 120 accident and emergency departments nationwide had already cut back on work or were preparing to do so after years of COVID-19 strain.

AFP