ReportageTo relieve congestion in the critical care services of Hauts-de-France, emergency physicians from the SAMU deploy a complex mechanism. Since the beginning of March, 47 patients have been transferred to other regions.
This is the most critical moment. Six of the emergency workers from the SAMU set out to lift the mattress from the stretcher on which a resuscitation patient with Covid-19 is lying, intubated and sedated, in order to introduce her into the small plane planted in the middle of the tarmac of the Lesquin airport, in Lille, Wednesday March 31. You have to be careful of the dozens of infusions and tubes that run through your body.
“It’s sporty”, recognizes Jérôme Cuny, his face reddened by the heat. The doctor of the SAMU du Nord coordinates this complex machinery of medical evacuations to other regions – the “Evasan” in administrative jargon – started since early March in Hauts-de-France.
The manipulations are linked to a well-tuned little music, in which every minute counts. Barely an hour earlier, this 62-year-old woman was in an intensive care bed at the hospital in Valenciennes (North), which is crumbling under the influx of patients with Covid-19. In an hour and a half, she must land in Vannes, where an ambulance is waiting for her, to join the Océane clinic, ready to welcome her. A second patient coming from the intensive care units in Creil (Oise) made the trip with her. The Amiens SAMU helicopter in which he was transported landed a few minutes earlier, about twenty meters from the plane.
The emergency doctor Axel Zongo and two nurse anesthetists will accompany the two patients during the flight, in order to always keep their failing vital functions in “balance”. “We are starting to get in the way, we are all used to working together, that makes a solid base and one less element of stress”, assures the 34-year-old doctor, who is making his third transfer by plane of this third wave. “The adrenaline is just used to keep in mind that the situation is critical”, specifies the emergency physician with a very calm tone, who pushes aside the “Cowboy” sometimes attached to his profession, especially for impressive missions like this one. “We constantly check all the details, we anticipate everything possible upstream, then only have to deal with the little surprises”, he explains.
“The firing window is very narrow”
They are now 47 patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 in serious condition to have been transferred from Hauts-de-France, to Belgium, Normandy, New Aquitaine and Brittany. A first for the region which did not need to resort to medical evacuations in the first wave, and transferred only seven patients to Germany in November 2020.
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