[The present status and problems of repatriation in France]

In France, repatriation, the inter-continental or interhospital critical care transport, is done on a large scale mainly by private companies with sophisticated medical knowledge, techniques and equipment. They offer a great assistance to SAMU when a disaster occurs. It is notable that almost all doctors who work for these companies are anesthesiologists and trained in SAMU. Repatriation is a large field involving critical care transport which includes intensive care medicine and disaster medicine as well as emergency medicine. One of the most important things about repatriation is that the judgement should be done and means of transport of the patient should be decided based purely on medical grounds.