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Madrid turns conference centre into ‘Europe’s biggest’ field hospital

Dozens of coronavirus patients were moved Sunday to a makeshift field hospital set up at a Madrid conference centre to be fitted with 5,500 hospital beds, which would make it the biggest such facility in Europe.

Published: 22 March 2020 14:58 CET
Madrid turns conference centre into 'Europe's biggest' field hospital
Photo: CESAR MANSO / AFP

Soldiers helped move 200 patients just before midnight from area hospitals to the sprawling IFEMA conference centre where 1,300 hospital beds have so far been set up, the regional government of Madrid said in a statement.

The field hospital will receive a total of over 300 coronavirus patients this weekend, the director of the facility, Antonio Zapatero, said in an interview with daily newspaper El Mundo.

“They are arriving in waves,” he said.

The field hospital will have 5,500 beds once it is fully sent up, including 500 in an intensive care unit.

Images released by the regional government showed a medical workers wearing a protective gown and face mask pushing a patients in a wheelchair inside the facility.

Another photo taken before the first patients arrived showed rows of empty beds covered in white sheets laid out on the concrete floor of the conference centre.

 

The authorities have also transformed hotels in Madrid, the worst-hit region, to treat mild cases of coronavirus to relieve pressure on hospitals.

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has warned that Spain's outbreak, already among the harshest in the world, would continue to expand.

“We must prepare ourselves emotionally and psychologically for very hard days ahead,” he told the nation in a televised address late on Saturday.

On Sunday Spain reported 394 more deaths in 24 hours, raising the total to 1,720, the second-highest in Europe after Italy.

“We have yet to receive the impact of the strongest, most damaging wave, which will test our material and moral capacities to the limit, as well as our spirit as a society,” he added.

Spain has issued lockdown orders for its roughly 46 million residents, who are only permitted to leave their homes for essential work, food shopping, medical reasons or to walk the dog.

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HEALTH

When can doctors in Denmark refuse to continue treating patients?

General Practitioners in Denmark have the right to break off a patient-doctor relationship in specific circumstances.

Published: 1 August 2024 16:35 CEST
When can doctors in Denmark refuse to continue treating patients?

Although doctors in Denmark have the right to decide not to continue treating a patient – requiring them to find a new GP – the circumstances in which this can happen are limited, and must be approved by health authorities.

The frequency in which the circumstances arise is also low. A doctor decided to no longer receive a patient on 375 occasions in 2016, according to the medical professionals’ journal Ugeskrift for Læger. The following year, newspaper Jyllands-Posten reported the figure at 458.

There are two main categories of circumstances in which a doctor can choose to take this step. The first is in instances of violent or threatening behaviour from the patient towards the doctor. 

The second (and most common) is when the doctor considers the relationship to have deteriorated to the extent that confidence has broken down, according to Ugeskrift for Læger.

It should be noted that patients are not bound by any restrictions in this regard, and can decide to change their GP without having to give any justification.

A patient also has the right to appeal against a doctor’s decision to ask them to find a new GP. This is done by appealing to the local health authority, called a Region in the Danish health system.

In such cases, a board at the regional health authority will assess the claim and if it finds in favour of the patient may order the doctor to attempt to repair the relationship.

Doctors cannot end a relationship with a patient purely because a patient has made a complaint about them to health authorities. This is because patients should have the option of making complaints without fear of consequences for their future treatment. 

However, if this is accompanied by the conclusion on the doctor’s part that there is no longer confidence in them on the part of the patient, they can remove the patient from their list.

The right to no longer see patients in the circumstances detailed above is provided by doctors’ collective bargaining agreements, the working conditions agreed on between trade unions and employer confederations under the Danish labour market system.

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