A patient died in the emergency room of Strasbourg University Hospitals (HUS) after a very long wait, alerted the HUS and the FO union on Tuesday.
"The death was declared to the Regional Health Agency (ARS) on the national portal for serious adverse events (EIG)", indicates in a press release the management of the HUS, according to which "the whole of the hospital community reiterates its sincere condolences to the family of the deceased.”
"Any death within our institution remains a difficult situation for the entire hospital community", insists the management.
The patient was 81 years old, said the secretary general of FO at the HUS, Christian Prudhomme, who could not specify why the octogenarian had been admitted to the emergency room.
Supported, he spent “about twenty hours on his stretcher in a care area” before being discovered, dead, during a change of team, according to the trade unionist.
The local radio station France bleu Alsace specifies that the death occurred on September 1.
In March, a patient had already died in the HUS emergency room.
Victim of a digestive haemorrhage, he had waited a dozen hours before being taken care of, which had aroused the ire of caregivers who had denounced the lack of hospital beds and the congestion of emergencies.
FO then wrote to the Minister of Health at the time, Olivier Véran.
A right of alert filed a few hours before the death
On Tuesday, FO wrote to his successor, François Braun, to alert him to "the recurrence of the deterioration of care and the deleterious operation of emergencies".
“This (new) death comes 36 hours after the filing of a right of alert made by our Force Ouvrière representatives denouncing yet another situation of blockage and overload of emergencies” of the New Civil Hospital (NHC) of Strasbourg, underlines the missive.
The union thus reports, "August 30 at 11 p.m.", the presence of "50 patients for 30 places on stretchers with vehicles waiting in the emergency room", a situation which will not show "no improvement" the next day “with 40 patients, including 26 present for more than 12 hours on stretchers”.
"We are entitled to question the multiplicity of serious events" in this service "and the inability to provide answers and solutions", writes the union again, according to which "300 beds" have been closed and "250 positions nurses" are vacant.
