The Brussels government must finally take serious action on bilingual out-of-hours services

Today in the Health Committee of the Common Community Commission (GGC), Brussels MP Gilles Verstraeten (N-VA) asked Minister Alain Maron about the lack of Dutch-language services in the out-of-hours services. “We are still a long way from truly grounded bilingualism, which is nevertheless required by law. The Dutch-speaking inhabitants of Brussels still do not enjoy the services to which they are entitled.”

For people who need a GP on weeknights, weekends or public holidays, there are five on-call services and one mobile GP out-of-hours service in Brussels for patients who are no longer able to leave their homes. Ten to twelve per cent of the total number of requests comes from Dutch-speaking patients. They still notice that sometimes only French-speaking doctors are available. “Nevertheless, all out-of-hours services are legally required to provide bilingual services,” Gilles Verstraeten says.

Today, there are 147 doctors with a bilingual certificate, of which 55 are members of the French-speaking GP federation, and 92 are members of the Dutch-speaking GP association. Compared to their French-speaking colleagues, almost twice as many Dutch-speaking doctors participate in the service. At the same time, there are 143 French-speaking doctors (compared to seven Dutch-speaking doctors) who claim to be bilingual but do not seek certification. “We have known for a long time that bilingualism is mainly guaranteed by Dutch-speaking doctors. That in itself is problematic, because French-speaking colleagues shift the work to the Dutch-speaking colleagues who do make the effort to obtain their bilingualism certificate.”

With a total of 297 bilingual doctors available (147 with a certificate and 150 without), a continuous bilingual GP out-of-hours service must be possible. However, that is not the case. Gilles Verstraeten puts the Brussels government at fault for this: “A lack of bilingual service in the GP out-of-hours service is an old sore in Brussels that has been considered a ‘fait divers’ for too long. Initiatives are being taken, such as a bilingualism Bonus Career break for the calculation of, specifically, civil servant’s pension. In order to obtain the annual pension amount in the public sector, the reference salary is multiplied by the number of employment years. That result is then multiplied by the 1/60 career break, the so-called bonus. An advantageous break applies for certain employees, so that they can reach the maximum pension more quickly. bonus and the possibility of taking language lessons, but this clearly does not ensure bilingual out-of-hours services. That is an open secret, which Minister Maron still denies, however, since he says no complaints have been received. I am calling on him, and Dutch-speaking Health Minister Van den Brandt in particular, to make this a priority, because this status quo leads to life-threatening situations. The Dutch-speaking patients in Brussels, who often find it difficult to find a GP, have their rights and they must be respected.”