An 83-year-old man lost his life last Sunday in the Donsión parish in Lalín (Pontevedra) while waiting for an ambulance to be transferred to a hospital. There were fifty minutes of anguish, as confirmed by the spokesmen for the 061 emergency service. The old man suffered from respiratory failure and the doctors from the nearest health center attended his call in just over 10 minutes. While he was struggling between life and death, the urgent dispatch of a medical transport was requested, but there were hardly any free vehicles in the area. As a result, the old man passed away.
From the Department of Health Emergencies (061) it is insisted that the patient “had health care at home and the service was assisted at all times from the Coordination Center by a coordinating doctor specialized in emergency care and emergencies sanitary.
The Galician Health Service confirms that the essential medical resource to take the patient to a hospital took about an hour. The demand for greater ambulance supplies in rural towns is constant. Last May in O Rosal (Pontevedra) the doctors decided to transfer a patient on a stretcher down the street because the ambulance did not arrive.
The 061 points out that in Lalín (20,103 inhabitants) there is a basic life support ambulance (SVB) belonging to the urgent medical transport network of Galicia-061. In addition, the region of O Deza (40,063 inhabitants) has another SVB assistance ambulance based in Silleda which, if considered “adequate”, is mobilized by the medical staff of the Coordination Center to other municipalities, such as Lalín, who are assigned this coverage area.
Urxencias Sanitarias defends that, since 2019, it has reinforced the advanced life support resources that provide coverage in the area with an advanced life support (AVS) nursing ambulance based in Santiago (50 kilometers from Lalín) and with the expansion of the hours of service provision of the medicalized helicopters based in Ourense and Santiago during all daylight hours that allow them to operate.
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