The wife of one of the injured in the accident at the construction site of the Costa Teguise civic center has denounced the “inhuman” treatment that she claims her partner has received since the incident occurred, and in particular last Tuesday, when he was transferred to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and was “more than six hours in the hold of the ship”, “without ventilation” and without medication for the pain.
“They have treated him like a package”, his wife questions, who regrets that they have been involved in “a fight” between the Molina Orosa Hospital and the mutual insurance company. “Since it was a work accident, the Hospital told us that it depended on the mutual insurance company,” she explains. Thus, although on the day of the accident both he and the rest of the injured were admitted through the emergency room at the Molina Orosa, they were later informed that they were not going to take care of the operation that her husband required.
Among other injuries, I.G.M. suffered a fracture of a vertebra in the spine, as well as the tibia and fibula. However, a week after the accident, which took place last Wednesday, June 9, he had not yet been operated on.
“They have been passing the buck to each other. On Friday of last week I asked what was happening and they told me that they had transferred him to the mutual insurance company that they had to take him out of the Hospital,” says his wife, who denounces that in the Molina Orosa they were for days “treating him only with morphine” for the pain.
Trip in the hold of the ship
Finally, after filing a complaint with Asepeyo, they were informed that this Tuesday, June 15, he was going to be transferred to Gran Canaria, because in Lanzarote they had no agreements with any clinic to perform the operation. However, the conditions of that transfer had nothing to do with what they had been told.
“They told him that he was going to go in a cabin, but when he got to the ship there was no way to get on, because he has a fracture in his spine and cannot walk,” says his wife. Thus, he spent the entire journey in the hold of the ship where the cars travel, inside the ambulance and “without any ventilation”.
According to her, on the trip he was only accompanied by the ambulance driver, and she denounces that during that time they did not even administer the medication that he had prescribed, which in addition to antibiotics included morphine for the pain. “The person accompanying him told him that he did not have that medication,” his wife assures.
“The war they have shouldn't hurt us”
“It is incredible that they transfer him in these conditions,” she says indignantly, extending her criticism to both Asepeyo and the Molina Orosa Hospital. “The war they have between them shouldn't hurt us,” she warns, without explaining why he did not receive care at the public center, when her husband “pays Social Security.”
“Because it is a work accident, they have left us unprotected and Social Security washes its hands,” she questions. Regarding the possibility that the Law includes that care be provided in the public center and then the bill be charged to the insurers when they should assume the expense, she states that in the Hospital they told them that “they had payment problems from the mutual insurance companies.” In fact, she points out that she has become aware that her case is not the only one, and that the same thing happened with another serious work accident that occurred recently on the island.
“From what I see, it is all a bureaucratic issue and while they are with 'you owe me' and 'you don't pay me', they are abandoning the citizen,” she denounces, insisting that “you cannot have a person on morphine for a week” when they require an operation. “Things are not like that. We have rights,” she defends.
Finally, after arriving in Gran Canaria last Tuesday, he was admitted to the San Roque Clinic, where his wife says that they had to start “the entire protocol again, as if the accident had happened at that moment, because they knew nothing about him”. Now, more than a week after the accident, he finally had a date this Friday for a first operation, of the tibia and fibula, and next week he will have surgery on his spine.
No coverage of expenses for the companion's trip
As for his wife, she was scheduled to travel to Gran Canaria this Friday, since the mutual insurance company did not cover the expenses of her trip as a companion either. For this reason, she again questions the damages that they are having to suffer precisely because it was a work accident.
“They arrive at the hospital in shock, on the verge of losing their lives, and they find that they don't act,” she laments, recalling the seriousness of the accident, in which four workers were injured after the roof on which they were working collapsed. In her case, she explains that she found out about the event through a friend who lives in front of the construction site, because from the company, Hormiconsa, they didn't even call the family to inform them. And according to her, no official from the Teguise City Council, on whom the work depended, has contacted her during this time either.
Regarding her husband's colleagues who were also injured, she states that they were already discharged from the Molina Orosa Hospital itself. One of them says that he was operated on there, but urgently, “because the concrete on which they fell contains soda that burns the skin, and it had entered his ear.”
However, in the case of her partner, she states that they told them “that they were awaiting a response from the mutual insurance company, as to whether it would cover the expenses.” “And that since it was a fracture, they had a maximum of ten days to operate,” she says indignantly. Finally, the operation will arrive almost exhausting that period and after a transfer to Gran Canaria that she describes as “inhuman.”
In fact, his wife wonders why he was not referred to that island from the beginning and in decent conditions “if they know that there is a protocol and they have already had the same problem in other cases”, instead of having him for several days in the Lanzarote hospital “with tremendous pain and based on morphine”.
The situation she denounces, and of which she affirms that there are other precedents with work accidents, is also added to the one recently suffered by another woman with a high-risk pregnancy, who had to leave the island in the eighth month of pregnancy to receive health care, because the Molina Orosa Hospital refused to do the follow-up she required in the final stretch and to schedule a cesarean section, also claiming that her mutual insurance company was the one who should take care of it. In this case, she was a civil servant and the insurer presented the vouchers committing to cover the expenses, but the hospital did not accept them, without explanations of what happened having been given so far.
