Caldas da Rainha hospital refutes version initially given to media
An official inquiry has been launched into what exactly happened to the woman suffering a miscarriage outside Caldas da Rainha hospital yesterday.
Initial versions pointed to the woman being denied care by the hospital because its obstetrics department was closed. This was later ‘refuted by the hospital’, in a carefully worded statement.
Needless to say the story made all television evening news channels, thus assurances by IGAS, the general inspectorate of health activities, and health minister Ana Paula Martins that all efforts now will be on getting to the absolute truth.
A lot will hinge on the statements, given freely to the media, by Caldas da Rainha fire station commander Nélson Cruz.
As our report yesterday explained, Cruz explained that at 07.21 an ambulance from his station was called by CODU (the Urgent Patients Guidance Center) to help a 32-year-old woman who was in front of Caldas da Rainha hospital emergency services, inside her car.
“The woman had had a miscarriage, had the fetus with her in a bag and was bleeding profusely inside her vehicle,” he told reporters.
When firefighters arrived at the scene, they passed information about the woman’s condition to CODU and told her husband to go and ask for help inside the hospital – although the man had already done so as soon as they arrived.
Nélson Cruz said that “CODU gave them the option of going to Bissaya Barreto Maternity Hospital in Coimbra”, but he was being advised by his own team that the woman was bleeding so profusely that it would not be easy to get there safely without differentiated support, because the hospital was over 130 kms away “more than an hour’s journey.
“If we’re dealing with a person who has just had an abortion and is bleeding profusely, naturally we can’t control internal bleeding in an ambulance and that victim’s life is at stake in a short time, losing blood like that,” he said.
After insistence from the firefighters to CODU, the woman was finally attended by a doctor, essentially around 40 minutes after her arrival at the hospital.
In the wake of Nélson Cruz’s powerful statements on national television, the Unidade Local de Saúde (ULS) Oeste (under which Caldas da Rainha operates) confirmed that the hospital’s gynecology and obstetrics emergency department was “not working”, but denied the hospital had refused to attend to the woman.
“We have a record that the patient only entered the hospital at 08:04 today and was immediately admitted. At no time was she refused admission, nor do we have any record of her insisting on being admitted,” said the statement – which cut no ice at all with Commander Nélson Cruz, who accused the ULS Oeste of “failing to tell the truth”.
He added: “if an emergency department is closed, there will be no record of patients being admitted”. ND
Source material: LUSA
