A 56-year-old woman with dyspnea (difficulty breathing) and tachycardia had to wait thirty minutes for a vehicle to take her to the hospital because there was no ambulance available at that time.

Twenty-five minutes, which seemed like forever, it took the vehicle that took a 48-year-old man who had been run over on the SE-30 to a health center to arrive.. There was also no ambulance.

A 53-year-old man who suffered a myocardial infarction in the middle of the street was waiting for a transfer for twenty minutes. The ambulance never arrived and he was taken to the hospital in another alternative vehicle.

The three previous cases have happened in Seville in recent days and have been denounced by the Seville Medical Union (SMS) to illustrate (and demonstrate) the consequences that the shortage and lack of maintenance of the advanced life support ambulances for Out-of-hospital Emergency (SUAP).

For eight months, in the health district of Seville, finding an out-of-hospital emergency ambulance -those that attend to emergencies such as those described- in conditions is more than complicated.

According to the SMS, the usual thing is that a few are out of service due to multiple breakdowns: that the smoke from the exhaust pipe enters the cabin, the doors do not close or that the interior temperature even reaches 47 degrees during the transfer. of a patient because “not even the air conditioning works”.

This forces, on many occasions, to look for alternatives and use other types of vehicles to transport the sick, such as the so-called rapid intervention vehicles or cars without sirens, lights or stretchers.

Temperature reached in one of the ambulances. SMS

Currently, the professional union pointed out, of the six teams that attend to the notices in the city of Seville, only four have an ambulance. The other two have to make do with rapid intervention vehicles that are not prepared or equipped for the transfer of patients.

The SMS also complains that this situation has been brought to the attention of the health district management repeatedly without, until now, solutions have been sought. “The fact that urgent notices, in which the life of a person is at risk, are attended with vehicles that do not allow urgent transfer to the hospital, puts the lives of these patients at serious risk,” warns the union.

In addition, to the lack of ambulances is added, according to the SMS, the shortage of materials and the reduction of the staff of doctors. “From the Medical Union of Seville we have been denouncing for years the increase in the delay in attention to out-of-hospital emergencies caused by insufficient staff”. As a consequence, of the six theoretically existing emergency teams, some will not have a doctor, that is, they will only be staffed by nursing staff and technical drivers.

For its part, the SAS, to questions from Europa Press, has assured that the provision of vehicles from the Seville District and 061 “guarantees assistance” and has announced that it is working on a specification to “award a new contract to have ten ambulances new ones”, while he has defended a “fluid and continuous work” with the unions.

The SAS has detailed that the District has two vehicles designed to transport advanced life support equipment and the “necessary” human equipment for emergency care “in the shortest possible time”.. The Board has wielded “another seven operational medicalized ambulances, which will be nine this Thursday, July 27, belonging to the Primary Care emergency services, and another seven from the urgent transport network.”

“If a transfer of the patient is necessary, the most appropriate resource is activated by the emergency coordinating center, which assesses the condition of each patient and their needs,” the SAS has replied to the criticism of the SMS.