‘Hospitals are overcrowded, and that's nothing new. We've been warning about the difficulties of hospitalising people leaving emergency departments since 2013,’ says Agnès Ricard-Hibon, an emergency doctor and spokeswoman for the French Samu-Urgences association. In response to the flu epidemic, 87 hospitals have activated the ‘white plan’, a system that allows certain operations to be rescheduled or staff on leave to be recalled. ‘When patients stagnate on stretchers in emergency corridors, there is a 40% excess mortality rate for fragile patients’, she warns. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES