A 48-year-old woman dies with a positive PCR on Covid-19 who did not get face-to-face medical care for a week

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"What he has is a lot of nerves and what he needs is a psychologist."

According to the family's version, this was the diagnosis made by telephone by a doctor from

(

), even on

, 48, with no previous pathologies, who ended up dying only 24 hours later, a victim of the coronavirus .

The woman had an increasingly high fever - it had not dropped below 39 degrees for days - and phlegm accumulated that - already lying in bed - made it increasingly difficult for her to breathe.

Her husband,

, and one of her three children (

) were confined with her in the family home after having tested all three positive in PCR.

For eight days in a row they tried, unsuccessfully, for her to be seen in person by the medical services, but -despite the repeated calls to the health services- that medical visit only arrived two hours before her death, already in an irreversible situation, when the severe symptoms of suffocation no longer allowed him to speak, suffering many tremors.

Delirium throughout the night and only after a call for help at 7:00 in the morning the next day - last Monday - received a visit from the doctor, already being unconscious: "Now it is wrong and not before", a change in the diagnosis that was already irreversible for the victim.

Only then was his transfer authorized, as an emergency, to

(

), where he died a few minutes after entering, after 9 a.m.

Julia - a housewife and mother of three children - was buried this Tuesday, without being able to fire her father and son, who are still confined, who still cannot believe the circumstances of death while they have put the case in the hands of a attorney.

The Junta de Extremadura, through the Extremadura Health Service, assures that it will respond to the Justice if the case reaches the Courts, as it seems.

Meanwhile, in the town of Aceuchal (5,400 inhabitants) the indignation has soared and the City Council has raised a public complaint to the medical authorities of Extremadura in which it shows the discomfort of the entire town due to the "deficit situation of primary care" of the town at the same time that they show their regret and support for the family of the deceased.

Ana Belén Rosa, daughter-in-law of the deceased, who has denounced the case before the Junta de Extremadura.

Ana Belén Rosa

(21 years old) is the girlfriend of

Julia's son who spent the last few days close to his mother's bed.

How he is also confined, in this case in his house in

and has sent a letter to the Councilor for Health of the Board,

denouncing the case and demanding responsibilities: "We are not going to return the life, but we have to fight for it because there is no right to what happened, he should not have died if he had acted correctly and not continually delaying him, "he assures EL MUNDO.

This physiotherapy student says that the authorization for the victim's hospitalization came very late, when she had already worsened irremediably.

In addition, he says that the ambulance transfer from Aceuchal to Almendralejo - along a regional road that separates both towns in 38 kilometers and about 25 minutes - in the ambulance was neither the most appropriate nor the most humane.

First, because the vehicle took more than 45 minutes to arrive and only the driver was in it without any medical assistance.

The doctor who had visited the confined house gave the order for the transfer but left and it was the victim's father and son who helped the driver to place her on the ambulance stretcher.

Driver and patient - in the back and with serious breathing problems - made the trip without further company or assistance.

The mayor of Aceuchal,

denounces that there is only one ambulance to cover the needs of some 10,000 residents because it covers not only this town but also others close to the region, such as

or the villages of

"We do not know if on Monday when the transfer was requested he was covering another service in some other area and that is why it took so long," he told this newspaper.

Julia became so serious that at the Tierra de Barros Hospital in Almendralejo they gave her three consecutive resuscitations in just a few minutes, but she ended up dying of respiratory failure.

"If I had come yesterday, I would be alive ...", Ana Belén assures that the doctors said when they called the victim's husband (farmer) and her son by phone to communicate the tragic news.

WEEK

Ana Belén remembers that the marriage began to feel bad (cold, malaise, tiredness, muscle aches ...) last Sunday the 11th. As the hours passed, the fever especially affected the woman.

That same day they went to the Aceuchal Health Center, where they were authorized to pass the PCR tests, which would be carried out the next day (Monday 12, holiday), in Almendralejo, which is the town where the tests are carried out in the entire region of Tierra de Barros.

On Tuesday the 13th they receive confirmation from Public Health from the Junta de Extremadura that both have tested positive and have to confine themselves at home, along with their son Ismael, who lives with them.

Since then, every hour spent in the family home has been a "helpless" struggle for Julia to be attended to in person in the face of the ever-increasing deterioration of her health.

As the week goes by, he can hardly eat any more, he suffocates more and more, he has a lot of phlegm and, with the arrival of the weekend, he can no longer get out of bed.

Every day, worse: "Both her son and her husband make numerous calls (to 112), which must be registered, the answer being that it is their health center that is responsible for going to assess her, since she is ill and states that he suffocates, "Ana Belén narrates in the letter sent to the counselor. She also denounces that without a face-to-face medical evaluation they dared to prescribe medication such as tranquilizers.

The Minister of Health of Extremadura, José María Vergeles, in a recent press appearance.

The doctor who attended to her on the phone "told her that she was like that because of her nerves and that they would call again in two or three hours, but that she saw that she was breathing well, and I wonder how you are able to make an assessment like this just for phone, "he complains.

Ana Belén recalls that "they also ordered her to take paracetamol for the fever, but in a few hours it would rise again."

THE KEY

For her, the key is that the doctor did not want to make the visit inside the house, where there were three positives for coronavirus: "And acting like this they let her die", surely because she was a young woman, without previous pathologies, and that by phone everything was going to be solved, despite the continuous fatigue and the fact that he drowned more and more every day, even becoming completely disoriented: "You, who are a doctor (in reference to the letter to the counselor) can intuit that everything could be due to the lack of oxygenation he was having. They even inform them that he is foaming at the mouth ... and he has the courage to continue prescribing anxiolytics and tell him that it is from the nerves, and all this by phone until the 19th at 07.00 hours, approximately, they call again because she no longer responds and it is in those moments when the poor thing is almost dead when they decide to transfer her to the Tierra de Barros Hospital, dying a few minutes later ».

For this reason, the family asks the following questions: «Do you believe, Mr. Counselor, that there is the right to let a young person die in his home suffocated by the management they are doing in

And he adds: " I can assure you that when the family gains strength this will not be forgotten.

Do you think that people can continue to be served by telephone?

How many more have to die in these circumstances to take action?

For all these reasons, Ana Belén requests, on behalf of the family, the opening of a disciplinary and sanctioning file "against the optional responsible who omitted the repeated calls alerting the state in which he was".

In turn, they will ask for a patrimonial responsibility and that the responsibilities be clarified.

In relation to this case, the Minister of Health José María Vergeles has indicated that when the letter reaches him and he reads it, he will be made available to the family to attend to "all the questions" and information, as well as to try to "alleviate that immense pain that they have to have".

In any case, he has preferred not to pronounce on the accusations of possible negligence "because I do not believe that anyone has wanted to do harm, either by omission or in any other way."

For his part, the mayor of the town recalled that there are "multiple complaints about the care provided in the health center" and considers that the Ministry of Health should give an explanation about the operation of the health service protocol zone, since he believes that the toilets are "overwhelmed" and the users "scared and powerless due to the lack of means to be treated

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