Gruesome killings in psychiatric hospital horrify France

France’s health minister convened an urgent meeting today to address security at hospitals after the gruesome killings of two psychiatric hospital workers that have shaken the country.

Philippe Douste-Blazy called for greater co-ordination between hospitals and police after the discovery yesterday of the bodies of a nurse and a nurse’s aide - one beheaded, the other with the throat slit – at a hospital in the southwestern town of Pau. Officials said the head of the nurse was found on top of a TV set at the hospital.

“All emergency services, but also psychiatric services, must be linked directly to police stations,” Douste-Blazy said after meeting with health workers and Interior Ministry officials to discuss ways of combating violence and boosting security at hospitals.

Hospitals across France were to observe a minute of silence at noon tomorrow to honour the slain carers, the minister told reporters.

Meanwhile, five men taken into police custody for questioning a day earlier were released, state prosecutor Eric Maurel said.

The men ranged from 30 to 40 years old and included a former hospital patient, he said. They were apprehended while in a drunken state and suffering from behavioural problems.

Maurel denied news reports that prosecutors believed the primary suspect had been apprehended, saying that “no evidence has been found against him at this stage”.

A judicial probe was to be opened early in the week, he said.

The bodies were found around daybreak yesterday in a building in the geriatric ward of the hospital, where a shattered window pointed to a possible break-in, Maurel said.

Many across France reacted with disgust. A front-page headline in the newspaper Journal du Dimanche read: “Scenes of hospital horror.”

Union leaders faulted a staff and funding shortage, saying security has been a problem for months, dozens of jobs were set to be cut, and violence took place regularly at the hospital.

“It is horror, terror, fear, disgust – fear of returning to work,” Cathy Sanders, a regional official from Worker’s Front union, told RTL radio. “Last night, the staff was doubled” as a precaution, she said.

Douste-Blazy announced last week that he planned to present by March a mental health reform package for the country, which he said lags behind others in psychiatric treatment.