Overwhelmed staff and weary patients at a state-run hospital in Pachuca, Hidalgo, have accused authorities of negligence and demanded that they open a section of the hospital constructed three years ago to deal with the problem.

They reported that emergency room patients regularly wait up to 20 hours to receive treatment in the facility operated by ISSSTE, the State Workers’ Social Security Institute.

Hospital staff claimed that the situation is unbearable as they receive as many as 60 patients per day and there are not enough beds for such numbers.

The situation has led to patients regularly being treated in waiting room chairs or on the floor. Those who get a bed, they said, are “lucky.”

They said that the situation could be remedied by putting into service an internal medicine ward that was built three years ago on the second floor of the hospital. The area has 59 oxygen-equipped beds, but only 25 have been made available as administrators say there is insufficient staff to attend to all of them.

The situation has led to cases of maltreatment, such as that of a 48-year-old patient identified only by the initials G. H. R., who was diagnosed with bronchopneumonia. He was made to sit in a chair day and night, despite needing to be on oxygen.

The patient’s family tried to speak with hospital director José Antonio McNaught Gutiérrez, but were denied access to his office by a police officer.

The patient was finally taken to the intensive care unit on February 11, but it was too late. He died that day.

Hospital staff said that the man’s death attested to the need for a solution to the problem and that the overcrowding only gets worse on the weekends.

They said that such issues as the intolerably long waiting times in the emergency room have been hidden from federal and state authorities when they make observational visits, claiming that they are only shown the parts of the hospital that are functioning adequately.

Source: El Universal (sp)