The National Consultative Commission on Human Rights warns of racist bias in hospitals
By Léane Madet
Published on , updated on
In the corridor of a hospital in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, in January 2025. QUENTIN TOP/HANS LUCAS VIA AFP
Decryption The annual report of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) denounces racist bias in hospital care in France.
The figure is chilling: in France today, a Black woman presenting to the hospital with chest pain is 50% less likely to be considered a "life-threatening emergency" than a white man. This data is taken from the annual report of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) devoted to the rise of xenophobia in France, and which includes a particularly edifying section on the discrimination experienced by racialized people within the medical sector.
This study was conducted in 2023 by Xavier Bobbia, head of the emergency department at Montpellier University Hospital. One thousand five hundred and sixty-three healthcare workers from France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Monaco were exposed to images generated by artificial intelligence, depicting patients of different genders and ethnic origins—all accompanied by descriptions of identical symptoms. The result is clear: even though they suffer from the same ailments, people perceived as non-white—and particularly Black women—are taken less seriously than white men.
A racist bias that is often unconscious, but whose effects are very real: the CNCDH report points out that it has consequences on the quality of care and, even more tragically, on the life expectancy of the patients concerned. Everyone remembers Aïcha, the 13-year-old girl accused by firefighters of faking a malaise and who died twelve days later from a cerebral hemorrhage, in July 2023. Her parents filed a complaint for "involuntary manslaughter" in December 2023 and an investigation is underway to determine whether this error of judgment could have been motivated, at least in part, by the patient's skin color.
"Mediterranean syndrome"The report states that a number of healthcare providers tend to minimize the severity of pain expressed by patients of African or North African origin, in the name of a so-called "Mediterranean syndrome." A term based on the ignoble—yet persistent—prejudice that these patients are prone to exaggerating their suffering. Although it has no scientific basis, it is sometimes even written out in medical records. This results in delayed care, particularly for pregnant women of African origin, who receive much less support than others during childbirth.
READ ALSO > “She’s overdoing it!”: At the hospital, the racist cliché of “Mediterranean syndrome”
These racist biases are not new: they are part of the painful history of the North and the South and draw their foundations from the abject theories that justified slavery and colonization. In particular, in "biological racism," born from the mind of the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné , one of the first to classify and hierarchize humans. This type of study, aimed at establishing the superiority of the "white race," contributed to the animalization and inferiorization of certain groups. And endorsed inequitable practices in medicine - some of which continue to spread, insidiously, within the medical profession.
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These discriminations experienced in hospitals, but also those which, the CNCDH vigorously reminds us, occur everywhere in French society, weigh on the mental health of racialized people. Citing a recent INSEE survey , the report recalls that among victims of discrimination linked to their origins, their skin color or their religion, 56% declared that they had had a psychological impact "fairly or very significant" . From adolescence, the first psychological consequences are observed: chronic stress, headaches, hypertension, depression... Today we speak of "racial stress", to designate the whole range of disorders experienced by victims of acts with racist connotations. And of "racial burden", to designate this constant hypervigilance which the latter demonstrate in an attempt to avoid them - leading to a deterioration of self-esteem and a feeling of isolation. At a time when mental health is being elevated to a major national cause, it is high time to act.
