A Samu regulator.
Drawing.
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Tristan Reynaud - Sipa
"Abandonment", "non-assistance" or even "manslaughter": several complaints call into question the management of Covid-19 patients by the Samu, whose officials justify the "sorting of patients" and say they are ready to "return accounts ".
During the night of September 7 to 8, 2020, Patricia Urcel died of cardiopulmonary arrest at the age of 53, a few hours after being hospitalized.
A few days earlier, she had tested positive for Covid-19 and faced with the deterioration of her state of health, had contacted the Urgent Medical Assistance Service (Samu) who had ordered her not to "especially" go to the emergency room.
Support after the third call to the Samu
On the morning of September 7, the regulator, contacted by telephone, had estimated that she had no "symptoms of someone who is in respiratory distress", when Patricia Urcel's brother observed using an oximeter that she presented. an alarming oxygen saturation rate.
It was not until her son's third call, on the evening of the 7th, when she was no longer breathing, that a rescue team was dispatched to her home in Hauts-de-Seine and transported her to a Parisian hospital.
"We wonder about the absence of a decision from the regulatory doctor," said Me Anaïs Mehiri, lawyer for the son and two brothers of Patricia Urcel who lodged a complaint Monday with the Nanterre prosecutor's office, in particular for "manslaughter" and " non-assistance to a person in danger ”.
Leaving people in pain "until they reach critical health"
This doctor "is proactive in the idea that we must above all do nothing," says the lawyer, who prepares complaints for a dozen similar cases.
Beyond possible individual regulatory errors, the lawyer denounces, in another legal process, the impact that national directives may have had on the very organization of this regulation.
In July, she thus lodged a collective complaint in Paris, on behalf of relatives of twelve people who died of the coronavirus in March and April 2020, in particular for "neglect causing death".
The complainants accuse the Samu of having followed guidelines published by the Ministry of Health in March 2020 to avoid saturating hospitals.
According to them, this has led to people being left in pain “until they reach critical health”.
Not an "anti-doctor complaint"
Assuring that this is not an "anti-doctor complaint", Mehiri explains wanting to target, "beyond the Samu, the administrative authorities who took these directives".
"There is a fantasy of secret directives that have been given", in particular "to let people die in nursing homes", but "it is absolutely false", says François Braun, president of the Samu-Urgences union in France.
At the head of the emergencies of the CHR of Metz-Thionville and the Samu of Moselle, he ensures that the caregivers have "not changed their ethics" despite the epidemic waves.
“The reality for all patients is the benefit-risk analysis,” he explains.
“Will a 97-year-old bedridden and dependent person benefit from resuscitation?
Certainly not.
It's not a magic wand.
"
Ask "the question of the failure of the public health system"
However, his service is questioned by a 41-year-old man, who lodged a complaint in October, in particular for “involuntary violence”, against the Metz Regional Hospital, the Samu-57, the general direction of Health and Public Health France.
Affected by Covid-19 in March 2020, this steelmaker contacted several times on the 15th, without being able to be hospitalized.
He will not be until four days after having felt the first symptoms, and will spend 15 days in a coma, intubated, with a life-threatening prognosis.
So that it is not only "lampists" who pay, the plaintiff also seized the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR) against the Minister of Health Olivier Véran and his predecessor Agnès Buzyn.
"It is important that on the occasion of this health crisis the question of the failure of the public health system is asked," explains his lawyer, Me Bertrand Mertz.
"Sorting is the basis of emergency medicine"
But for emergency physicians, the incriminated facts are routine: "There is a collective hysteria on the sorting of patients, but sorting is the basis of emergency medicine", summarizes the president of the French Society of Medicine (SFMU), Karim Tazarourte.
Head of emergencies at Edouard Herriot hospital (Lyon) and Samu du Rhône, Karim Tazarourte considers "normal and even healthy to report".
But he assures him: none of his colleagues "would have fun letting patients die for want of care".
Justice
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Miscellaneous
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Complaint
Covid 19
Coronavirus
Society
Samu