AN ITALIAN doctor on the coronavirus frontline has told of his impossible choice to have to let patients die as Italy runs out of oxygen. Dr Michele Boldrini, 33, said Italians are now “dying alone” amid a national hospital bed and oxygen shortage. Doctors and nurses at work in the intensive care departmentCredit: EPA Speaking …
Dr Michele Boldrini, 33, said Italians are now “dying alone” amid a national hospital bed and oxygen shortage.
Doctors and nurses at work in the intensive care departmentCredit: EPA
Speaking to from Milan, Dr Boldrini – a Consultant in Urgency and Emergency at the Emergency Department in San Carlo Borromeo Hospital – says he has never faced such tough decisions so frequently as the current coronavirus pandemic.
Dr Boldrini, who has worked in hospitals since 2012, revealed he has to ‘let people go’ each day as the crisis continues.
He said: “I still spend my days deciding who is eligible for intensive care, who to let go, and who to treat with intermediate devices.”
The doctor said he was diagnosing severe cases of pneumonia multiple times a day – a diagnosis he would usually only see “4 times in a year.”
Dr Boldrini also claimed there are simply not enough medical supplies at hand to treat the ever increasing victims of the deadly disease.
He added that if the epidemic continues to spread at its current rate, “the number of oxygen devices and beds is finite: most future deaths will happen because there won’t be enough for everybody.”
Only patients with a high fever and who need significant levels of oxygen support are currently hospitalised in Italy, where so far 6,820 have died from the virus that has infected 69,176 people.
Sun UK
