Temperatures on surgical and pediatrics wards “can reach 40ºC”
Cancer patients interned in the main building of Porto’s IPO (Institute of oncology) are subjected to temperatures of 40ºC during summer heatwaves.
“Without air conditioning, there are several patients on the surgical and pediatric wards that ask family members to bring them electric fans, as a way of trying to support the high temperatures”, writes Correio da Manhã today.
“We have cancer patients ‘dying of heat’ in there, and professionals without conditions to work”, staff tell them paper, “tired of a situation that has been going on for years”.
As the paper explains, IPO’s employees want what they describe as “inhumane conditions” fixed “once and for all”.
Apart from the high temperatures felt on floors 6,7,8 and 9 – where patients undergo surgery and are subsequently interned – the problem is repeated on the 12th floor, in the Pediatric ward.
“Here, children have to undergo chemotherapy in high temperatures. It’s enough that they have cancer and have to deal with the cruelty of the treatments”, say CM’s sources.
Windows equally give no respite. “The old frames let heat in during the summer, and cold during the winter…”
CM has spoken with IPO management which “recognises the problems” but insists that they have no record of deaths “related to heatwaves, or “any disfavourable clinical evolution among patients” due to the heat.
The paper was told the hospital has tried tackling this problem, and is focused on repairing windows/ refurbishing the internment wards and ‘reinforcing climatisation of the main building’.
And until these ‘structural measures’ have been put into place, the hospital will be “trying other measures of mitigation, like portable ventilation systems” (very possibly another words for fans).
Source material: Correio da Manhã
