The Union of Pre-Hospital Emergency Technicians (STEPH) have denounced several cases of delays in sending ambulances this week, some with delays of more than two hours and one of which resulted in the patients death.
For this particular case in Faro, which involved a suicide attempt, INEM “could not find an ambulance available to send to the scene” in time to help the patient.
In a statement, STEPH said “For a case with this degree of priority, effectively threatening life, an Emergency and Resuscitation Medical Vehicle was only sent to the scene an hour and forty-five minutes after the initial call”, meaning death was unfortunately declared on the spot.
The president of STEPH, Rui Lázaro, told news agencies that among the complaints received is a case in Olhão, where a 60-year-old woman with suspected cerebrovascular accident (CVA) waited more than two and a half hours for an ambulance to be sent. He also pointed out other cases, such as that of a 74 year old man, in Tavira, with a suspected stroke, who waited 52 minutes for an ambulance to be available to help him.
These incidents all occured on Wednesday, the day STEPH were heard at the Parliamentary Health Committee meeting, where it spoke of the lack of resources, expressing concern about the fact that in April there was already a high number of ambulances unavailable due to lack of professionals, a situation that normally happens only in the summer period.
The union president said that this month the forecast was of “more than 50% of ambulances unavailable”.
As he explained, last year this level of crisis only occurred during the summer (June, July, August and September), adding: "If in April the scenario is like this, in two or three months we will be much worse".
The STEPH union says that the cases reported to it on Wednesday are of "extremely seriousness" and points to the "inefficiency of a service that INEM should guarantee citizens", even talking about "possible serious negligence in the emergency medical assistance”.
The union president says that he will forward the complaints to the competent authorities, including the Minister of Health.
Source https://postal.pt/
