A 10-year-old child died Monday in Bas-Saint-Laurent following waiting for an ambulance for very long minutes.
On January 2, parents from Esprit-Saint contacted 911 when their child was in cardiorespiratory arrest.
As the only ambulance in the area was already occupied, another vehicle had to be brought from Cabano, a municipality 57 kilometers away.
When paramedics arrived at the scene, the child was unconscious.
They carried out resuscitation maneuvers before heading to the Rimouski hospital located 55 kilometers away. The child, who had a medical predisposition, died following another transfer to CHUL de Québec.
If it is not yet clear whether his death might have been avoided, many denounce the fact that the sector is not properly covered.
“57 kilometers from Cabano to Esprit-Saint, it’s a big 40 minutes more. If the ambulance had been there in dynamic deployment, it might have been there in 10 or 15 minutes maximum, ”explains the vice-president of the Federation of pre-hospital employees of Quebec, Jérémie Landry, to TVA Nouvelles.
“It’s been a good half hour that the little one hasn’t had treatment. Care that might have made a difference for survival. We can’t say today if we might have saved him or not, but every minute counts in urgent cases. In this case we would have taken every minute to give to the child.
The Esprit-Saint sector is doubly exposed.
There are always shift schedules, i.e. paramedics are waiting for a call at home.
Above all, there is no dynamic deployment. This means that when the only ambulance is busy, another ambulance is not sent from a sector further away to cover just in case.
“I experienced it a year and a half ago with my wife who had a heart attack here. It took half an hour before the ambulance arrived,” says the mayor of the municipality, Langis Proulx.
“I consider that an ambulance in our sector would be a priority. It would definitely save lives.”
The pre-hospital service of the CISSS du Bas-Saint-Laurent says that the sector does not have the volume of calls sufficient (325 in 2021) to implement the dynamic deployment for the moment.
