Spanish Doctors Now Have to Choose Who to Live & Who to Die

By
Siti Hawa
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It’s crazy how things have changed over the course of a few months.

One day we’re walking out and about with our friends and family and the next there’s a Stay Home tag on Instagram.

Now, Spanish doctors are allegedly choosing who gets to live and who dies.

Image: Tenor

Spanish Doctors Now Have to Choose Who to Live & Who to Die

According to The Straits Times, Madrid is facing a real crisis.

In one of their largest hospitals, a doctor named Dr Daniel Bernabeu signed the death certificate for one patient and immediately turned to attend to another patient who was choking.

People are dying in waiting rooms before they even had a chance to be admitted and treated.

This shows how bad the COVID-19 situation is in Spain where hospitals are severely understaffed.

In fact, some funeral services have been put to a stop while morgues are running out of space. This has forced corpses to be stored at the main ice rink.

Younger People Have A Better Shot At Surviving

It’s truly heartbreaking that Spain has had to resort to this but according to Dr Bernabeu, intensive-care wards are overflowing which has prompted new rules.

The main gist of it is that younger patients have a better chance of surviving the coronavirus, thus older patients are not prioritized.

“That grandpa, in any other situation, would have had a chance. But there’s so many of them, all dying at the same time.”

Now, other parts of Europe such as Britain are finally taking the COVID-19 outbreak more seriously and putting measures in place.

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Still, frontline doctors in Spain aren’t even wearing full protection and are simply donning a cotton robe and a mask.

“Colleagues are falling sick around us,” Dr Bernabeu said. “I’m a radiologist, I’m not supposed to be in the ER, and yet here I am in the trenches.”

Spain’s Situation

The Spanish government has reported yet another 738 deaths. It is now the worst-hit part of the world and other countries are now scrambling to implement more measures.

On Thursday, the daily count of deaths fell to 655.

Just a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had reportedly “brushed off the threat of the virus”.

On 8 March, PM Sanchez was encouraging its people to join a mass demonstration in support of international women’s day even though a lockdown had been implemented in northern Italy.

Around 120,000 people were present at the event held in Madrid that day, which includes several ministers and Mr Sanchez’s wife, Begona Gomez.

Now, Ms Gomez has fallen ill with the coronavirus along with Equality Minister Irene Montero and Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo who has been hospitalised since Sunday.

PM Sanchez finally admitted that they’ve never experienced a threat of this scale and Spain’s total death toll now stands at 4,089 which is more than China’s.

“Only the oldest, who knew the hardships of the Civil War and its aftermath, can remember collective situations that were harsher than the current one.”

On 14 March, Spain announced a state of emergency and loudspeaker drones made announcements all over Madrid which ordered people to go indoors.

“The other generations in Spain have never, ever had to face as a collective something so hard,” he said.

What’s worse is that the Health Ministry revealed that they didn’t have the capacity to administer enough tests to track just how widely the virus has spread.

The facts are certainly gloomy and we can only pray that the situation will improve not just for Spain but for the rest of the world.

In the meantime, do stay safe everyone and remember to practice social distancing.

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Siti Hawa
Email: [email protected]