Not uncommon cases: why sick people in Chernihiv region cannot receive medical care in time due to bad roads
Kyiv • UNN
An elderly woman died of a stroke after an ambulance was unable to reach her due to poor roads in Chernihiv Oblast, highlighting a chronic problem where agricultural companies are blamed for damaging roads but no one takes responsibility for repairing them, leading to tragic cases of untimely medical care.
The situation with the road between Sydorivka and Komarivka in the Nizhyn district of Chernihiv region, which local residents blame for the destruction of two large agricultural holdings, has shown that this is a chronic problem for this region.
And the tragic story of an elderly woman who died of a stroke and was barely taken to the hospital by an ambulance on a broken road is not an isolated case.
But this, apparently, has not yet prompted either the authorities, regulatory bodies or agricultural firms themselves to take any action to prevent such tragedies from happening again, UNN writes .
Details
We learned about two more tragic cases this year from the head of the Dmytrivska village community in Nizhyn district, Valentyn Boyko. In particular, due to a bad road, an ambulance was unable to take his friend to the hospital in Bakhmach the first time. The man also had a stroke.
We have no road to Bakhmach at all, and the ambulance does not arrive in time, and there have already been two cases of this, and people died. In February, my friend had a stroke. "The ambulance arrived and said we wouldn't take him because we couldn't take him on this road. They didn't take him, he got worse. They came again, took him away, and he died the next day!
According to the standards approved by the Cabinet of Ministers in December 2020, an ambulance should arrive at critical calls within 10 minutes of receiving the call. Due to traffic complications, meteorological conditions, and other circumstances beyond the control of the emergency medical care system, this standard may be exceeded, but not more than 25% of the time.
In case of emergency, an ambulance should arrive within 20 minutes of the call. The standard may be exceeded in no more than 15% of cases.
But getting to the patient is only half the battle, as he or she still needs to be transported to the hospital. And, as we can see from the case of the Dmytrivska community, doctors are not always ready to take responsibility, realizing that the transportation of a patient is guaranteed to end in death on the road. And labeling people in white coats in such a situation is a completely ungrateful thing to do, because they act on the principle of "do no harm.
If cases of untimely medical care due to poor roads leading to death start to become a system, it means that the problem needs to be solved immediately. But somehow it turns out that no one is in a hurry to take responsibility.
Returning to the road between Sydorivka and Komarivka, we have already written that the Ukrainian Dairy Company does not consider itself to be responsible for its destruction. Kernel has a similar position.
"Our company's agricultural enterprises are located in these regions and, accordingly, vehicles travel between them to carry out business activities. The trucks move in compliance with the standards of permissible load on the road surface. The condition of local roads, as well as assessing the need for their repair, is the responsibility of local authorities and relevant bodies," the agricultural holding said in a response to a request from UNN.
Although Ukrtransbezpeka admits that the section of this road needs to be repaired, no one has found any violations of the weight regime by the above-mentioned agricultural companies.
As UNN has learned, desperate people are preparing an appeal to the head of the Chernihiv military administration, Vyacheslav Chaus, demanding that he intervene in the situation. Local residents are even ready to block the movement of heavy vehicles of agricultural companies if the issue of road repairs is not resolved.
