The protocols that prevented the orientation of the elderly at the height of the pandemic have once again led to a confrontation between the government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the opposition. Socialist deputy Lorena Morales read to the Madrid Assembly the content of dozens of minutes and calls to 112 revealed by elDiario.es in which the abandonment of the centers is confirmed.
“I called several times this morning because they are dying like bedbugs. There’s no staff, they can’t cope. Please leave now because you will find 180 elderly people dead. The residence tells us that no one calls them or gives them equipment. These are the words of the daughter of a user of the Sanchinarro residence on March 24, 2020 when she contacted the emergency number of the Community of Madrid.
“It broke my soul to hear the calls and the pain of the families,” Morales responded this Thursday, deploring that “Ayuso stole the right to health care from thousands of elderly people in nursing homes. retirement, leaving them to die in a cruel way.” “He will tell me that you are twisting the pain of the families, you are preventing any investigation and in addition you are making fun of the professionals of the citizens’ commission.” he added.
As the socialist deputy dared, the Minister of Family, Ana Dávila-Ponce de León, insisted that the only objective of the opposition representative is to “twist the pain of families and professionals”. “It’s disgusting,” insisted the PP politician who, to respond in turn, read a series of letters of gratitude that nursing home workers received. Dávila did not specify when these gestures of gratitude took place, whether during or after the pandemic.
“We are missing 7,291 seniors, 7,291 reasons for Ayuso to resign”
According to Dávila, relatives of residents have sent letters to senior center employees, acknowledging that they are “the ten best professionals” and that they have been the “lifeline” of some families “when problems arise health”. The advisor assures that she “meets” the relatives of elderly residents “when” they request it.
However, Morales insists that the Ayuso government “does not want to look in the face” of the relatives of the elderly who died during the pandemic in residences located in the Community of Madrid. And he ruled: “There are more than 200 open court cases: “7,291 elders are missing, 7,291 reasons for Ayuso to resign now.”
This week, elDiario.es revealed dozens of transcripts of desperate communications from family members and staff of nursing homes in the Community of Madrid to the emergency number during the first weeks of the pandemic, and which confirm to both the existence of an exclusion protocol and the abandonment in which the centers found themselves.
This editorial also advanced the content of the minutes signed by the Regional Government Council itself chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso and by organizations such as Médecins sans frontières, the Red Cross or the SAMU during the visits carried out throughout of April 2020. “No hospital admissions. », “the auxiliary staff have been sleeping in the residence for two months”, “when the ambulance arrives, they refuse to transport them because they do not meet the criteria and they die”, “they were not admitted to the hospital and they did not receive palliative care”, are some of the sentences recorded after the visits.
These documents deny what the Madrid government has claimed since then: that there was no protocol prohibiting the transfer of residents to hospital centers. The head of the Ministry of Social Policies during the first wave of the pandemic resigned on October 2, 2020 after denouncing these protocols – supposedly non-existent – and calling them “unemoral and perhaps illegal”.
