In a moment of emergency, when time is of the essence, hope is placed in a life-saving device which, however, unfortunately, remains inactive.
It is a cry of pain and civic responsibility that comes to us from Eugenio Salpietro, a nurse from Castell’Umberto who works in Northern Italy. He recently experienced the tragic loss of his 79-year-old father Vincenzo, who suffered a cardiac arrest. It all happened in a few minutes, the time it took to try to save a life. When the elderly man’s heart stopped beating, those who were present immediately tried to use the local emergency medical defibrillator. A standard procedure, but it collided with an unexpected reality: when they tried to activate it, as Eugenio Salpietro himself told the “Gazzetta del Sud”, the device’s display remained off.
Despite the timely arrival of the “118” operators, there was nothing that could be done for the seventy-nine year old pensioner.
Forty-eight hours after the terrible event, Salpietro points out that the defibrillator has not yet been repaired or replaced, remaining unusable for the community.
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