REACTION
Edith Greffier, a retiree from the Belfort area, died on September 14 of a heart attack despite five urgent appeals from her family to the family. The family filed a lawsuit for "manslaughter", denouncing the delays and conditions of intervention. . "It is necessary to investigate globally, to know what the deadlines were, what were the signs", reacted on Europe 1 Dr. François Braun, president of Samu-Urgences de France.
The unfolding facts
This Saturday, September 14, at the home of Edith Greffier in La Chapelle-sous-Chaux, in the Territoire de Belfort, everything happened in barely an hour. After a family lunch, Anne-Sophie Forni-Greffier, the daughter of the 62-year-old victim, worries. His mother, who has high blood pressure, is not feeling well. Her daughter is very cautious and calls the 15 to 15:22 explaining the symptoms of his mother: "sweat, persistent pain in the left arm, difficulty breathing".
An ambulance is sent but quickly the state of the sexagenarian is degraded. Anne-Sophie Forni-Greffier called a second and a third time on 15 to 15:52. The 15 then decided to "trigger the SMUR (Mobile Emergency and Resuscitation Service, ed) at 15:55," said the AFP CHU Besançon.
His mother stops breathing. His family then begins a cardiac massage. The paramedics, arrived by private ambulance at 15:59 take over. The paramedics who "had not even been warned by the 15th that my mother was in cardiac arrest", indignant the girl of the victim.
The husband of the victim in turn calls the Samu. It is a little over 16 hours. He tells them clearly: "If she dies, it will be your fault". The emergency team will arrive at 4:17 pm, almost an hour after the first call. Edith Greffier will die at the hospital of Belfort-Montbéliard from a heart attack.
The daughter of the victim questions "the lack of diagnosis"
From the beginning, her daughter thought she was very clear. "One does not question the respect of the procedure but the lack of diagnosis in view of the precise and clear elements which I gave them", she entrusted to Europe 1. "I question the means unsuitable by Samu to try to save my mother, I think this is a problem that will become fairly recurrent in relation to the problems currently facing hospitals, "added Anne-Sophie Forni-Greffier.
The regional university hospital of Besançon, responsible for 15, replied that it followed the procedure and that an internal investigation was in progress.
"Expertise will tell if the doctor was right or not"
"There are answers to this family, which legitimately wonders what happened," said François Braun to Europe 1. In the first call, "the doctor did not assess that There were elements of gravity, the expertise will say if he was right or not, "said the president of Samu-Urgences de France.
"He immediately hired an ambulance and on the next call where he was told he was unconscious and obviously had a heart attack, he immediately hired a SMUR team, which is a team. resuscitation but unfortunately is far away because the hospital is far away, as are too many of our fellow citizens who are too far from our mobile emergency and resuscitation bases, "he added.
As to whether it would have changed anything if the emergency doctors had arrived earlier, François Braun remains cautious: "It is very difficult to say whether it would have changed something or not, hence the interest of this investigation."
This complaint is the latest in a series of proceedings against Samu, after the outcry caused by the death in late 2017 Naomi Musenga emergency Strasbourg: this young woman of 22 years had been taunted on the phone by an operator of Samu while she was dying. Other procedures were then initiated in Nancy, Colmar and Mulhouse.