The relatives of the octogenarian who recently died after a very long wait in the emergency room of the New Civil Hospital of Strasbourg (NHC), in the Bas-Rhin, wish “let all the light be shed” on this death and will file a complaint, their lawyer said on Wednesday, September 21.
“The family will file a complaint, either by joining the action of the prosecution” of Strasbourg if it has already opened an investigation, or, if this is not the case, by initiating the necessary steps “for criminal proceedings to be instituted and an investigation” for “manslaughter against X (…) be expedited to shed full light on the circumstances” death, said master Matthieu Airoldi.
The victim’s widow and two daughters believe that, “at the very least, there are big questions to be asked about the treatment of which [le patient] has benefited or from which he has not benefited in the emergency room” from Strasbourg. Asked at the end of the morning, the public prosecutor of Strasbourg, Yolande Renzi, had not yet replied.
The death of the patient, which occurred on September 1, had been mediated by the union Labor Force (FO) who immediately wrote to the Minister of Health, François Braun, to denounce “the deleterious functioning of emergencies” at the university hospitals in Strasbourg, where a previous patient had died in March, after having waited a dozen hours before being taken care of.
This time, the octogenarian died after spending “about twenty hours on his stretcher in a care area” before being discovered, dead, during a change of team, according to the secretary general of FO at the university hospitals of Strasbourg, Christian Prudhomme.
Matthieu Airoldi says he has “had a very, very fragmented transmission of the file” of the patient who presents “holes and a period of at least three hours” during which he “was left unattended and unattended while extremely agitated in the emergency room.”