SEDAN
Children’s hospitals across Germany are facing a serious crisis due to the increase in viral infections, according to doctors and medical associations.
“Children are dying because we can no longer care for them,” Michael Sasse, senior physician in charge of pediatric intensive care at the Hannover Medical School, told the Merkur Online news site on Tuesday.
According to the doctor, the situation was already precarious even before the current wave of respiratory infections. But the huge number of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections has made the situation even worse.
Sasse added that the clinics are “totally” overloaded and that children are now being treated in normal wards that actually belonged to intensive care units.
The DIVI association for emergency medicine has warned of a “catastrophic situation” in children’s intensive care units after conducting a survey with doctors from 130 children’s hospitals in Germany.
The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control agency, has announced that viral infections are expected to continue to rise in the coming weeks.
Minister of Health promises reform of health services
In related news, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said on Tuesday that a “revolution” was planned for German hospitals.
“The hospitals have serious problems,” he told a news conference in Berlin. The main problem, he stressed, is the payment of hospitals through the so-called flat rates per case. These are flat rates for comparable treatments.
As a result, he said, clinics are stuck on “a hamster wheel” of doing as many treatments as possible as cheaply as possible. “Therefore, with this system, you have a tendency towards cheap medicine,” Lauterbach continued.
His reform proposals call for patients in German hospitals to be treated less based on economic considerations and more based on medical considerations in the future.
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Source: news.google.com