Barcelona, Jan. 13 (BNA): The Spanish medical community scored a victory after a court ordered the regional government to compensate doctors up to 49,000 euros ($56,000) for having to work without personal protection claims during the devastating first months of the war. pandemic.
The Associated Press (AP) reports that the lawsuit by the doctors’ union is the first to be won in Spain, whose health care system was pushed to the brink when COVID-19 first emerged.
“This ruling is groundbreaking in Spain,” Dr. Victor Pedrera, general secretary of the Valencia Medical Association CESM-CV that filed the suit, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Pedrera, the family doctor, said he contracted COVID-19 shortly after Spain hit in March 2020 and spent two months at home “in very bad shape and with no idea what was done to treat”.
The eastern district court of Alicante ruled, late on Tuesday, that the Valencia region had failed to protect the health of its doctors during the first three months of the pandemic. The judge said the lack of personal protection suits created a “grave safety and health risk for all health workers, and especially for doctors, due to their direct exposure.”
The judge ordered that compensation be paid between 5,000 euros and 49,000 euros to the 153 doctors in the lawsuit.
Doctors who were forced to work without proper protection but who were not injured and who were not forced into isolation will receive €5,000. The value of compensation rises to 15,000 euros for doctors who were forced into isolation, 35,000 euros for those injured but do not need hospital care, and 49,000 euros for doctors who needed treatment in hospital.
The Valencia government will appeal the ruling, but regional president Zemo Puig issued an apology to medical workers while saying the initial impact of the pandemic was “completely unexpected”.
The ruling said the district’s health department had failed to fulfill its duty to protect doctors “from the moment I learned of the existence of COVID-19, and in particular after declaring a national emergency.”
The General Council of Doctors in Spain, which represents the regional unions, celebrated the decision in a statement to the Associated Press, while “regretting that it does not apply to every doctor.” She said 121 doctors in Spain have died from COVID-19.
Spain, like many countries, struggled to provide health workers with personal protective suits and face masks during the early months of the pandemic. The national government imposed strict home confinement for several weeks after declaring a state of emergency in March 2020.
The ruling comes as Spain’s health care system is once again strained by a new wave of infections led by the highly contagious Omicron variant, even if deaths are now much lower thanks to the country’s high vaccination rate.
Nearly 25 percent of critical care units are occupied by COVID-19 patients and emergency workers say they can barely keep up.
“We are exhausted. Emergency workers are at their limit,” said Dr. Tato Vazquez Lima, president of the Spanish Society of Emergency Medicine.
Pedrera said more lawsuits are coming from other doctors in Valencia and he expects more lawsuits from health workers of all kinds across Spain.
“I am sure that other groups of health workers and doctors from other regions will be encouraged to go forward with their lawsuits,” Pedrera said. “This will be on the person who opens the door.”
MI