Tiago Petinga / Lusa
The man who died in Bragança after being more and an hour and 20 minutes waiting for the ambulance lived two kilometers from the emergency medical car headquarters, which then took five minutes to arrive at the scene.
On October 31, 2024, one, after waiting for medical help for an hour and twenty minutes at the strike of INEM’s prehospital emergency technicians.
According to the report of the General Inspection of Health Activities (Igas), the woman of the man, who suffered an acute heart attack, during the strike of INEM’s prehospital emergency technicians, did the First contact with 112 at 3:45 pmbut the call was not answered, and the occurrence was only created about half an hour later, 16h12.
At this point, according to the testimony of the technician of the Porto Urgent Sickness Center (Codo) heard by Igas, the so -called “entered the separator 112, for not being attended by the National CODO”, being On hold and only at 17h00 was answered by CODO/Coimbra, more than an hour after the initial contact.
After data passage through Codo/Coimbra, it was Codo/Porto that activated the ambulance of Bragança Volunteer Firefighters, at 5:04 pm vehicle arrived at the scene four minutes later (17h08).
Already the most distinctive medium, VMER (Emergency Medical Vehicle and Resuscitation) of Bragança, which is two kilometers from the victim’s house, was eventually activated to 17h03arriving at the place five minutes later, at 5:08 pm.
That is, the help arrived One hour and 23 minutes after the first contact, through a path that was made in five minutes.
Death could have been avoided
Igas’s expert recognized that “the likelihood of survival after cardiorespiratory to stop is always very small,” but stressed that “in order to increase survival, resuscitation maneuvers must be immediately started, which must be kept without interruption until the prehospital emergency.”
He also said that survival increases significantly if there is local access to an external automatic defibrillator (DAE) and, in this case, “no resuscitation maneuvers have not started, There was no DAE and the delay was significantly exceeding 10 minutes”.
Experts confirmed that the onset of cardiorespiratory stop occurred at 3:45 pm, but the basic life support maneuvers only started at 5:08 pm, more than an hour and 20 minutes later.
A Igas speaks of a “manifestly excessive, exaggerated and unacceptable delay” between the 1st request for relief by family members and the arrival of the environment able to develop advanced life support maneuvers.
It concludes that if CODE service were done in a “reasonable time” and suitable to help such a case, it was possible to get more timely with the victim.
Responsibilities on the phone for finding out
Igas is still obvious that there was an effective delay in care that “decisively conditioned medical help to the victim”, but could not find out, “without margin for doubt”, who should have answered the calls who were waiting in the so -called “separator 112” at the time they were rebuked for the national CODE.
Therefore, Igas considered impossible to impute legal-disciplinary responsibility to any concrete worker.
However, it admits POSSIBILITY OF THE STATE LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY for the malfunction of this public service.
In this regard, it recalls the INEM Organic Law, which says that the institution should “define, organize, coordinate, participate and evaluate the activities and operation, in the territory of mainland Portugal, an Integrated Emergency Medical System (SIEM), in order to guarantee the injured or proper and correct health care victims”.
It considers it “imperative and mandatory” that the telephone calls referred to the national CODO had not been “waiting” in the so -called separator 112 for 48 minutes.
