Alex Trelinski
A 75-YEAR-OLD man has died after suffering serious burns in a medical helicopter fire in Cordoba province last August.
He passed away at Sevilla’s Virgen del Rocio Hospital on Tuesday, with his family announcing the previous day they were suing the Andalucia Health Service for €1.8 million.
The fire on August 10 was caused by an oxygen leak as the helicopter was about to take off from a football field in Cabra.
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The lawyer, Damian Vazquez, a specialist in health law who works for the patient group, El Defensor del Paciente, has filed the claim for damages.
The group said: “The patient had severe chest pain and constant sweating at home, so his relatives called for an ambulance to get him to the Margarita de Cabra Hospital.”
“It was decided to do the transfer by helicopter because there was no mobile ICU with the necessary equipment to take him by road to the hospital,” they added.
He was first taken by ambulance to the María Dolores Jimenez Guardeño Sports Centre football field where the helicopter was waiting.
The fire started during pre-flight checks with El Defensor del Paciente stating the patient was on a stretcher inside the helicopter, with a doctor and nursing bailing out- leaving the man ‘immobilised and tied up’.
The pilot also fled but a colleague then tried to free him, but an explosion stopped him from continuing and he suffered minor burns.
El Defensor continued: “A police officer came to the aid of the patient, so during all this time, the claimant suffered burns and damages because he had not been taken out earlier.”
The complaint points out that ‘the patient arrived at the Emergency Department of the Reina Sofía Hospital, where he was attended by health workers.
After performing the operation, they were informed of ‘the serious situation of the patient’, with ‘40% of the surface of the body burned; the lower extremities with third degree burns; the thorax, back and arm with second degree burns, and the left leg especially affected, which had to be amputated’.
Since then, the patient received treatment in the Burns Unit of the Virgen del Rocío Hospital, with admission to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), ‘with great suffering and pain caused by the serious burns caused in the helicopter fire’.
