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EMPHASIS TEAM

“1 doctor for 120 Covid-patients”: Chief neurosurgeon describes dramatic situation at Volos hospital



“There is one doctor for 120 Covid-19 patients. People will die with what is going on here,” director of the Neurosurgery Clinic of the general hospital in Volos, Nikos Haftouras, said on Tuesday.


Describing the dramatic situation in the public hospital due to increased Covid-19 hospitalizations, Haftouras said “We are disappointed because there does not seem to be any hope.


He complained that the hospital of Volos is going through the coronavirus pandemic without having a pulmonologist.


“The situation is tragic. We will lose people. Some patients should be immediately transferred to other hospitals. We also have a problem with oxygen. The oxygen facilities were not designed for a vast increased care unit, a vast Intensive Care Unit. All three days, the oxygen was falling and the alarm was sounding.”


These are “the tragic consequences of personnel under-staffing. One doctor cannot serve 80 patients. The condition is now one doctor for 120 patients infected with Covid-19 plus 8 patients in the ICU. It is a hopeless situation. Patients can not feel safe”, the director told state broadcaster ERT TV.


He stressed that “the hospital has collapsed. It is essentially closed. We had said that we would put a “ceiling” on the 70 patients with coronavirus and now we went to 120, plus 8 who are in the ICU.”


He underlined “in this gloomy situation, we must not forget the other patients, the non-Covid patients, whose condition is aggravated. People are abandoned. It seems that the State is not doing anything substantial, but it is looking indifferently at the situation.”


"We have war. We are in this war are without ammunition and soldiers,: Haftouras from Volos hospital said adding “we are waiting for someone to die in order to place a patient in the ICU.”

The situation in hospitals in central and northern Greece has deteriorated dramatically in the last ten days, many go on duty without even a bed available in ICUs. The situation slowly turns dramatic also in Greek capital Athens.


Where the state is indifferent and has not taken adequate measures for the public health care system in advance triage is the solution, as the alternate Health minister said a few days ago.

Doctors told MEGA TV that they already do this practice.


Evangelos Kaimakamis, doctor at ICU of Papanikolaou hospital in Thessaloniki warned that this wave of the pandemic is particularly aggressive, and that it’s a matter of time that 85% of the Covid-patients in ICUs die.

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