MADRID – Last March, when the coronavirus was spreading around Spain, Lodia Bayona Gomez began vomiting and coughing.
A nursing home worker, she considered herself a potential Covid-19 case, tested loneliness and herself. Twice the results came back negative. As he lost weight and his urine turned red, he made repeated attempts to see a doctor and in late April, on a phone call, a man told him to stay home and prescribe medication for gastroenteritis and urinary tract infections.
But the pain continued to worsen and in late June, his sister took him to the emergency hospital unit. In mid-July, he underwent 12 hours of surgery to remove two cancerous tumors, one from the ovaries and the other from the bile ducts. She died in hospital nine days later, at the age of 53.
It was no accident.
Hospitals and other health care centers have been forced to dedicate most of their resources to Kovid-19 patients, and doctors are warning that rising cases of cancer and other serious illnesses are being detected, leading to much higher life costs. Can happen. That is beginning to be reflected in the toll lawsuit.
Ms. The details of Beyonc ગો Gomez’s care are part of the legal part brought by her sister, Fatima Beyonc,, who wants the Spanish public prosecutor to ignore the local health officials of the provocative city. Prosecutors said last month they would investigate the deaths.
Some other lawsuits have just been filed in Bargo, in which a woman was found to have terminal cancer after trying to get hospitalized for testing for seven months.
Carmen Flores, president of the association that helps patients or their relatives take legal action, said he has helped his association file more than 50 lawsuits since September, when Spain and other countries fell victim to the second wave of Covid-19. She said her workload is rapidly increasing as a result of medical errors and the oversights arising from doctors ’attention to Covid-19 at the expense of other illnesses.
Unlike some other countries, the Spanish government does not report how many medical lawsuits it files each year. But Ms. Flores said there has been an increase of at least 300 percent so far this year, overseeing courtroom filings across the country.
In some lawsuits, doctors have alleged that patients refused to see him face to face. But others claim that doctors have run into the wrong conclusion or that patients do not want to take risks as part of their exams because of the risk of catching Covid-19.
Mostly, though, doctors say they just work too hard.
Doctors in many countries have warned that the epidemic may have exacerbated other health problems, either through a change in resources or because, especially in its early stages, people were afraid to seek help for other conditions.
The British Medical Association’s chief physicians’ association in Britain said hospitals there had received more than 250,000 instant cancer cases in April, May and June than usual. A survey of U.S. cancer patients published in April delayed nearly one in four reports of their care due to the epidemic.
But Spanish doctors say the crisis there has led to special vulnerabilities in the country’s health care system.
“In Spain, we are proud to be the best in the world in specialties like transplants, but this epidemic now makes us realize how much we have neglected our primary health care,” said Kesar Carballo. Emergency Unit of Raman Y Kajal Hospital, Madrid.
“We have thousands of our professionals who have left to work abroad, and we really need to make them more attractive to work here again.”
Staff shortages have been particularly worrisome in places like Madrid. Capital Region leader Isabel Daz Ayuso is building a new hospital. But at a time when health labor unions are forcibly expressing dissatisfaction, health care professionals are struggling to find work in them.
Last month, Spanish doctors went on a nationwide walkout to protest their working conditions and warn officials to hire additional doctors without adequate qualifications.
“It will cost us a lot of time, money and effort to build the foundation of our healthcare system,” said Dr. Carbolo. “You can’t find new doctors in just a few months.”
Mrs. Flores, from the congregation that helps patients take legal action, echoed these concerns.
“The virus is, at least, hopefully, to explain to us that primary health care may not be functioning adequately when staff and investments are constantly being reduced.”
In another case of a diagnosed cancer, radio journalist Lydia Signs-Maza Jorilla produced the final months of her sister Sonia. She died in August of colon cancer in August after 48 months at the age of 48 after a three-month visit to a doctor. Instead, she received bad advice over the phone from her local health care center.
“Our public administration has used Covid as a perfect excuse to keep doctors on the phone and eliminate the possibility of making a proper diagnosis of patients,” Ms. Said Sains-Maza Jorrilla.
“If her doctor had really seen her and touched her, I’m sure my sister is alive today, because colon cancer is terrible, but you don’t have to die like her,” he added.
Last month, the regional health minister, Vernica Casado, told a news conference that Ms. He was sorry if “something good had not been done there” in the case of the treatment of Science-Maza Jorilla. On Oct 6, prosecutors began investigating her death from colon cancer.
While doctors and nurses are coping with better protective gear than the second wave of Covid-19 springs, their morale seems low.
“I can’t pay enough attention to a patient when I have to see 100 people in a single day recently,” said Patricia Estevan, a doctor at Madrid’s Public Health Care Center.
“We have health care workers who are not only tired now, but also angry because they’ve seen a slight improvement,” said Manuel Franco, an epidemiology professor and researcher at Alcala de Henres University and an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University. Protocol, but not hiring more people as promised. “
However, some recent lawsuits also show a risk for patients who seek treatment in an overcrowded hospital with a rush of Covid-19 patients.
Jesse Pinos is suing at a hospital in the northern city of Santander after the death of his grandmother, Maria Delia Laguatasig Iza, who accidentally awaited his end pendicitis surgery in a corridor filled with Covid-19 patients.
Although she tested negative for coronavirus before surgery, she was diagnosed with Covid-19 a week later, eventually dying from it.
The hospital did not respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors in Santander began their investigation on Oct. 26.
“She suffered some devastating medical errors that you would never expect in a modern and functional healthcare.” Mr. Pinos said. “It is clear that she was hospitalized without covid, then sent home to cough and eventually died of the virus.”
