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Christophe Prudhomme (emergency physician)
In Mayenne, a new situation of delayed care by the emergency services seems to be at the origin of the death of an elderly lady, after the infection of her pacemaker. Her husband filed a complaint for failure to assist a person in danger. The repetition of these cases raises more and more questions.
It is a tragedy, with the air of deja vu, which took place recently in Louverné in Mayenne. After five days of contact with the emergency services, without ever having been able to have someone moved, a woman was taken care of, too late, for an infection of her pacemaker. Weakened, she died two days later.
6 days before being picked up
According to the testimony of the husband, who filed a complaint, the patient with a pacemaker had shown signs of weakness since December 14. He would then have regularly contacted the emergency services to have her taken care of, in vain. “For six days, I called the Samu, I called the doctor back and no one came”, he says on France Bleue. The cause ? The emergencies claimed to need a certificate from the attending physician to move. A doctor who himself would not have had time for a home visit. The pensioner is moved on the phone:
‘The doctor doesn’t want to come, so what do I do? Are you waiting for her to die or what?’.
It was only on the 6th day, when the condition of the old lady worsened, that she was finally transported to the emergency room and examined. But according to the words of the husband, the small infection with the pacemaker which could have been treated by antibiotic, then spread to the valves of the heart. The patient died two days later, on December 21, in intensive care.
The legal route, the only possible lever?
Convinced that this tragedy could have been avoided if the emergency services had reacted more quickly, the retiree therefore decided to file a complaint for non-assistance to a person in danger. The Laval prosecutor’s office also confirmed that an investigation had been opened. The Laval hospital center, to which the local Samu is attached, has already announced that it will collaborate with the police, but also that an internal investigation will be carried out to “avoid that such facts reproduce”.
For Dr. Christophe Prudhomme emergency physician and spokesperson for the AMUF, this umpteenth tragedy and the situation installed throughout the territory have lasted far too long:
“Mr. Braun and M Macron may have dead on their conscience, because in Mayenne as elsewhere, we learn that in view of the territorial difficulties, it has been decided to “run” the open emergency services, and to send vehicles from the Samu no longer with a doctor but a nurse. There comes a time when you have to say stop. In France today, if you don’t live in a metropolis, you are in danger.
The emergency doctor calls in particular for a real policy of regional planning, and to give itself the means to assign doctors where the needs are.
But to move the lines, according to him, and avoid a repetition of almost trivialized deaths, it is now time to go to the hard way, the legal way:
“Families need to file a complaint. There must be a condemnation from the State, including a certain number of directors of ARS and ministers, on the fact that today the policy implemented on public services leads to deaths . Let them at least be condemned for form and put on the index. Because what we are experiencing is a real scandal.”