A senior doctor in Russia plunged 50 ft from her office window during a conference call when she was told her hospital would be forced to take in coronavirus patients.
Dr Yelena Nepomnyashchaya, 47, a mother of two, had objected to the move because of an ‘acute shortage’ of personal protection equipment for doctors and nurses.njmn
She is now fighting for her life in intensive care after the fifth floor fall but medics are ‘refusing to talk’ about her chances of survival, according to TVK Krasnoyarsk.
The respected doctor was on a call with Krasnoyarsk regional Minister of Health Boris Nemik when she suddenly fell.
Reports say she had been told that 80 beds in one section of her veteran’s hospital at Vilskogo Street, was to be given over for coronavirus patients.
She was against the plan because of a shortage of protective equipment for doctors at Krasnoyarsk Regional Hospital for War Veterans, which she runs, say local reports in the Siberian city.
The regional Ministry of Health have since claimed that the hospital was ready to accept Covid-19 patients.
Deputy head of Krasnoyarsk region’s government Aleksey Podkorytov claimed the reason for her fall on Saturday may have had other explanations than reported by the local media.
‘So many things could have happened,’ he speculated.
‘It could have been because it was Spring, the overall stress, something in her family.
‘It’s difficult to say what could have happened.
‘There was nothing extraordinary happening at the time, just a routine conference call with doctors’ reports.
He added: ‘At the time (of the accident) there were no patients with coronavirus, yet the hospital was on high alert with all necessary equipment in place.
‘She just reported that there were no coronavirus patients.
‘They in fact started to be admitted into the hospital, but only a very few with the lightest form of the virus.’
Police are now investigating the woman’s fall and the circumstances surrounding it.
Krasnoyarsk is capital city of the second largest region in the Russian Federation.
The tragedy follows other reports of that doctors in a number of Russian regions have quit their jobs in protest over a lack of PPE.
Doctors are quitting hospitals over lack of personal protection equipment in the country, which now has 173,000 suspected of suffering from coronavirus.
