'New start:' Medics juggle surgery backlogs and virus fight

PARIS (AP) — Chatting before they go under the knife, the two women picture their lives after surgery. Caroline Erganian hopes to be rid of her pain. Lolita Andela imagines being able to be active with her kids.

After multiple false dawns, they scarcely dare believe that their Paris hospital, no longer monopolized by COVID-19 patients, is once again able to perform their intestinal tucks to treat chronic obesity. When the pandemic was burning through France's health system, the women's surgeries were repeatedly pushed back. But after months of waiting, their turn has now come.

Lying on a gurney, ready to be wheeled into the operating room, Erganian, a retired secretary, tells the surgeon: “I’m doing this surgery to have a better life. So I'm enthusiastic, not a bit scared."

“A new start,” replies the surgeon, Lara Ribeiro Parenti, thrilled to be back at work with her scalpel. “This is what we know best and what we enjoy doing. It’s a renewal, a new start, for us, too.”

For these women, yes. But many thousands of others in France and other European countries hardest-hit by the pandemic are still waiting for medical procedures that could change their lives and improve their health, but which were deemed nonessential when the virus ripped through hospitals.

To prevent the collapse of public health systems, their decks were cleared. People who had been scheduled for joint replacements to free them from pain, for cataract removals to defog their sight, for cancer checks, and myriad other life-improving and even potentially life-saving procedures, were told to stay home as staving off COVID-19 took priority.

At the Bichat Hospital in Paris, one of the French capital’s largest with 900 beds, wards fell silent as resources were poured into critical care...