A German holidaymaker waited in vain for two hours in hospital in southern France because of an understaffed emergency room and later died in his car in a parking lot. “After his death, an internal investigation was launched into the circumstances of his admission,” said Matthieu Blanc, deputy head of the Intercommunal Hospital Center of Fréjus and Saint-Raphael on Tuesday.
The hospital’s emergency department is currently limited because one of the doctors has been out for several weeks, he explained. The patient was received by a nurse at seven o’clock and left again at nine o’clock.
According to the newspaper “Var Matin”, the man was not treated in the emergency room in Saint-Tropez last Thursday because at the time it was reserved for patients in mortal danger. The staff told him to wait until ten o’clock, but he then left the hospital beforehand.
The police eventually found the man in a car in the parking lot of a nearby shopping center. A doctor certified a natural cause of death. The judiciary is not involved in the case.
The German embassy in Paris confirmed the death of a German in Gassin, southern France, on Tuesday, but did not comment on the circumstances of the death.
The emergency room in Saint-Tropez has only functioned to a limited extent ten times since the beginning of the summer, reported Var Matin. In France, emergency rooms have been in crisis for a long time. According to a union, 163 emergency services nationwide were at least partially closed over the summer due to a lack of staff. Overall, more than half of the departments were affected, including rural areas and large cities.
