With his arm badly slashed and held in a sling by a belt, the man was about to enter the emergency room of the Mayotte Hospital Center (CHM) in Mamoudzou, the biggest city in the French territory in the Indian Ocean. But he recoiled. The department was so quiet, so empty, it was disturbing. In the silent reception room, three or four men waited with half-closed eyes, while a mother held her child in her arms. Usually, it is impossible to find a seat, and sometimes you must wait two days to be looked after.

The situation had gotten even worse after Cyclone Chido on December 14. In the hospital, itself devastated by wind and rain, there were wounded people lying on the floor, screaming, crying, there were miscarriages. A tent had been set up outside to try and deal with the most urgent situations. On December 28, all that remained inside were a few dented plastic bottles.

The man with the slashed arm immediately became alarmed, thinking that there must be a police operation underway to screen undocumented migrants, as is regularly the case at emergency room entrances, emptying the waiting room. He was himself undocumented, like half of the territory's estimated 450,000 inhabitants. He had to get away – fast. Glances to the right, glances to the left, but not a uniform in sight, just a nurse on a break eating a bun.

'You have to admit, it's working'

The CHM's emergency department has been running slowly since a field hospital was deployed on December 24, at the Kawéni stadium in Mamoudzou. A nurse summed up the general feeling in the department: "We thought they were going to set up their thing, but it wasn't going to work. The large influx of injured people didn't seem to suggest that. In reality, you have to admit, it's working."

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