After the death of an 8-year-old girl in Rivera who was waiting for a transfer to the capital, the president of the State Health Services Administration (ASSE), Leonardo Cipriani, assured that “there is a structural problem” regarding the transfers pediatrics in the northern region of the country and especially in the border department.
According to Cipriani “there are no specialized ambulances to be able to make the transfers” since the one that was going to transport the girl, and that did not arrive on time, was from Salto.
The president of ASSE stressed that “the medical and professional team of the hospital acted quickly and correctly” and He claimed to have the recordings of the Emergency Medical Care System (SAME), which coordinated the transfer of the girl. coordination work with the aerial vehicle was carried out in “14 minutes”, despite the fact that it was later unsuccessful.
“YesAll private providers in Rivera were called, but a specialized pediatric ambulance does not exist in Rivera,” said the chief.
Beyond this, according to Cipriani “economic and material resources” are not the problem, because “ambulances can be bought quickly”, but the issue is the low presence of “human resources based in the area”.
On March 1, an eight-year-old girl diagnosed with a mediastinal tumor died while awaiting transfer from Rivera to Montevideo.
To prevent these events, Cipriani assured his “presence in the places” where they occur “to work with the technical, hospital, management and medical teams”, in order to “always see first-hand how events occur”. In this way, “a global vision of the fact is achieved, which always has the objective of evaluating well” and “correct the facts so that they do not happen again”.
Beyond what can be learned, Cipriani reported that “from the central ASSE” they began “an administrative investigation”; where “all the steps, one by one, of how everything happened” are seen.
The president of ASSE narrated that the patient had “a very serious pathology” and that an Air Force plane was going to transfer the girl first, “which even took off” from Montevideo to go look for the patient, but due to a “malfunction” had to return to Carrasco Airport.
The next option was an ambulance from Salto, which was already on its way to Montevideo with another patient, and before it reached Rivera, the girl had had a second cardiorespiratory arrest and they could not revive her.
