After 70 years, Dr Christian Chenay still wants to help people in the ‘forgotten’ suburbs of Paris

'What keeps me going? My patients,' says France's oldest doctor at 98

On a quiet street in a low-income Paris suburb, the doctor’s waiting room was so full that patients spilled out on to the pavement. Some from distant housing estates had travelled here as early as 4am to be sure of a place in line.

“This doctor is really loved because he takes time to listen to you, he calms you down,” said Yamina Derni, 63, who had been treated for benign tumours. “You don’t even notice his age.”

Christian Chenay, who celebrated his 98th birthday last month, is France’s oldest practising doctor. “I couldn’t possibly give up work,” he said in his small consulting room in Chevilly-Larue after treating his final patients of the day, an unwell toddler and a woman suffering from high blood pressure.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr Chenay with a patient who called him her ‘hero’. Photograph: Magali Delporte/The Guardian

“How can I stop when there are only three doctors in this area for a population of 19,000?” he added. “I keep going for my patients, particularly for the older ones, who I like to encourage. I love medicine. But I also like to keep active. If you stop working, you go downhill. At my age, if you spend your time watching TV and snoozing, you won’t survive long.”

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Chenay’s decision to keep working is partly due to France’s shortage of local family doctors. Although the country has a reputation for one of the world’s best healthcare systems, the lack of general practitioners has reached crisis point. The problem is acute in rural areas where millions struggle to access care, but also in some of the low-income Paris banlieues.

Half of all general practitioners in France are now aged over 60, and some work beyond retirement in order to keep practices open. Chenay is not alone in continuing into his 90s. Four years ago a 93-year-old doctor, François Le Men, finally retired from his practice in rural Brittany, apologising his heart problems.

Chenay began work as a general practitioner in this area of the Val-de-Marne almost 70 years ago. He has outstayed his own son, who also worked as a doctor but who retired at 67.

“I’ve seen a lot of change,” Chenay said. “The internet means more people now come in saying ‘I’ve looked it up online, I’ve got such and such illness and need such and such treatment.’ In reality they have no such thing and don’t need that treatment at all.”

He said he had been most struck by a rise in domestic violence. “Knife crime against women by their partners seems to me to have got much more prevalent in the last couple of years,” he said. “Men assume they can get away with it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr Chenay’s practice is a few kilometres from central Paris. Photograph: Magali Delporte/The Guardian

Chenay, who says he wakes at 6.30am every day, sees patients on Mondays and Wednesdays and cares for members of a religious retirement home one afternoon a week. But he said the heavy administrative load of the French health system, as well as his continuing study of latest research, meant he worked around 60 hours a week.

He’s the only doctor in the area who accepts patients without appointments. A sheet of paper and a pencil are fixed to the wall in the waiting room where people write their name on a first-come-first-served basis.

Chenay believes that a large part of general practice work is looking beyond initial ailments and helping patients with underlying mental health issues. He said the low-income Paris suburbs were a “forgotten place” where unemployment affected mental health and undocumented migrants often survived on little.

Chenay was born in 1921 in the western town of Angers and worked part-time as a welder to get through medical school. He walks with a cane due to a leg injury sustained while jumping from a train to escape forced labour during the Nazi occupation of France in the second world war. “The leg only really bothered me when I reached 80,” he said.

He doesn’t wear glasses and he said his sight was excellent after a cataract operation. “My hearing is also good, certainly better than the 18-year-olds who wear earphones with the volume up,” he added.

Sarah Lahrouchi, 31, who has been a patient of Chenay’s since she was born, said: “He’s got an amazing memory and he takes time to investigate the why and how of what’s wrong.” In recent years he had supported her when she lost her premature baby son following a car crash during pregnancy. She said he had treated four generations of her family: her late grandmother, her parents, her siblings, and now her own children aged between three months and six years.

Another patient, Leonor, 61, said: “He helped me after I had two miscarriages at a time when there was not much support for that.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marie-Suzanne Chenay (right) at Dr Chenay’s practice. Photograph: Magali Delporte/The Guardian

Life at the surgery has not always been easy. Chenay’s late wife, Marthe, was repeatedly stabbed in an attack outside his consulting room several years ago. She survived but later succumbed to Alzheimer’s. He and his current wife, Suzanne, whom he married at 91, have installed security cameras.

Chenay said he had been lucky enough to know six patients aged over 100. One woman who reached 106 had survived her family being deported during the Nazi occupation, and had lived alone for 25 years but kept “in good spirits”, still going out with a walking frame in her final years.

Asked for advice on living to a healthy old age, Chenay said: “I never smoked, drank or took drugs. So I’d say avoid those three things. Never stop, keep active. The key is learning to deal with stress. You can’t avoid stress – the organism needs it to develop defence mechanisms – but you can learn how to manage it. Make it a routine: whenever you have some down time, even five minutes, ensure you sit back for a moment and really relax.”

He said he didn’t fear for his own health. “There’s no reason to stress at my age because I’ve got a one in five chance of not waking up in the morning,” he shrugged.

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