Friday, May 7, 2010
Alain (my host) was kind enough to set up a visit for Kelvin and me to the military hospital. So, today started off with the Military hospital in Toulon, Sainte-Anne, which is the primary military hospital for the south of France and I imagine is one of their largest because Toulon houses the largest military port in Europe. In all it has 400 beds and is led by a two-star medical general.
Jerome Maslin, our host for the visit, said it is France’s international vaccination center, mainly for yellow fever. He brought us around to see the labs, hematology and toxicology departments, infectious disease labs, and the quarantine centers. Jerome is in charge of a level 3 quarantine room that we were able to see because the room is still under construction. As opposed to clean rooms which are created to keep pathogens out, the quarantine room uses negative pressure to keep pathogens from escaping. Needless to say, I was happy we were only visiting.
The hospital also has a public/private mission and takes civilian patients. It’s two main specialties are a burn center and neurological department. On our way out we were able to see the turtules which are the robots we heard about in the hospital that was under construction. As an aside, I was surprised to hear that it costs approximately 100 euros to make one pint of blood because the required testing and other costs.
So this all happened while the girls were visiting a theater. We then met at the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Toulon. At the Tribunal we met with Regine Roux, the Prefecture. A position that could be equated to a regional district attorney’s office in the United States. Over the meeting and lunch it was interesting to hear about France’s inquisitive legal system. In their legal system, the judge leads the investigation into a crime and working with police, the defendant’s attorney, and the prefecture, he or she tries to gather facts about the incident. After the facts are collected, the Prefecture will make a recommendation to the judge for an appropriate punishment. Josephe, who I mentioned in the Porquerolles post was previously president of the commerce tribunal. That tribunal handled problems related to business such as bankruptcy. There were also three other tribunals that deal with crimes. The lowest of the three dealing with petty theft, the next, financial crimes (think Goldman Sachs), and the last, more serious crimes such as murder.
Our next visit was to Université du SUD, Toulon-Var which is the law school in Toulon. We received a tour of the University by the Faculté de Droit or President of the University, Jean-Jacques Pardini and Valerie Gomez-Bassac from Univeristy Relations – Enterprises. The tour was wonderful and the University is physically very much like those in the United States with public meeting area, a library with meeting rooms, and lecture style classrooms. As for the University administration, it varies significantly from those in the United States. In the United States we have deans of individual schools that oversee faculty and have in many cases have significant autonomy. In France, the Presidents at the top of a defined hierarchy that everyone follows. Additionally, there is not much university/industry collaboration that takes place on the campus. Valerie, is the one person on campus who would do that and she is looking to expand that role of the University so it will be interesting to see if she takes me up on my offer to connect her with/visit some of New York’s campuses.
And so ends our action packed day at the Hospital, Courts, and University…
