Seventh Swine Flu death in Spain

[mysteriouza]

The General Nursing Council report on the death of baby Rayan meanwhile says the nurse who cared for him was not properly trained

A patient admitted to hospital in Albacete two and a half weeks ago has become Spain’s seventh victim of the A(H1N1) virus. It’s understood the 34 year old man suffered an underlying health condition, and was admitted to the General Hospital in Villarrobledo with respiratory problems compatible with the new virus. He remained in a serious condition until his death this Wednesday. He is the sixth person to have succumbed to the new flu in Spain this month.

The first victim was Dalilah Mimouni, the Moroccan woman who died on 30th June in the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid after an emergency caesarean to save her the life of her unborn child. Baby Rayan died a little over two weeks later, after what the hospital manager, Antonio Barba Ruiz de Gauna, said was a ‘dreadful medical error’. He was fed baby formula intravenously instead of through a tube to his stomach.


As investigations continue into the child’s tragic death, Spain’s General Nursing Council presented its own report this Wednesday on the care baby Rayan received in Gregorio Marañón’s neonatal ICU. They said the nurse who allegedly made the error should, by law, never have been sent to the neonatal unit as she had no specific training in neonatal care. They also said she should have refused to go when asked.

Máximo González Jurado, the Nursing Council’s President, said the hospital introduced a five-day course in neonatal care earlier this year, despite the two years of specialised training dictated by legislation. He said it was uncertain if the nurse in question had even taken this short course.

Thousands of nurses demonstrated outside many Spanish hospitals last week in support of their colleague and against the over-work and under-staffing they say they suffer in the profession.