Investigators concede one man died “due to lack of care”
The strike at INEM last November, blamed for the deaths of almost a dozen people, is back in the news today, with opposition parties baying for ‘responsibility’; demanding that health minister Ana Paula Martins is summoned to answer MP’s questions.
What does seem clear is that IGAS (the general inspectorate of health activities) is not convinced of the reported death toll.
In a statement released today, IGAS has conceded that one death “could have been avoided” if the victim, a 53-year-old man, “had been rescued in a minimum and reasonable time”.
“It was concluded that the patient’s death could have been avoided if there had been assistance, in a minimum and reasonable time, which made it possible to evacuate the victim via a Coronary Green Route to one of the nearest hospitals, where he could undergo coronary angioplasty in one of the respective Hemodynamic Units”, said IGAS.
As it was, the time it took for paramedics to reach the man cancelled out all the possibilities of saving him.
This was November 4, 2024 – a day in which two strikes took place simultaneously:one by pre-hospital emergency technicians working overtime, and another by public administration.
How two strikes could have even been ‘allowed’ to potentially affect citizens’ lives so dramatically is the central question. But it appears to have been deflected by IGAS which points the blame at the health personnel involved (as if the strike scenario had nothing to do with any of it).
In fact, according to a note released by the Ministry of Health, the man’s death was indeed “related to the alleged lack of care on the part of two professionals who were involved in the process, and not the strike at INEM”.
The note goes into what it terms as the “alleged lack of zealousness, care and diligence (…) (The professionals) did not act in accordance with good emergency medical practices”. They were “required to adopt a faster, more expeditious attitude, especially in the triage and dispatch of resources”. In short, the two professionals have been ‘thrown under the proverbial bus’, in spite of the fact that November 4 will have been a chaotic day for them, with emergency calls stacked up and no-one able to take them in good time.
How union representatives react to the ministry’s take on what happened will no doubt come clear in the coming hours. ND
