The Canary Emergency Service (SUCC)attached to the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islandstransferred 49 critically ill patients to hospitals in La Palma during the volcanic eruption Tenerife. Most of them, 46, were evacuated in SUC medicalized helicopters, one of them with the Air Rescue Service (SAR) helicopter and two by sea in a medicalized ambulance to the Los Cristianos Pier and from there to the University Hospital. from Canary Islands.
These data are part of the global health device that the SUC deployed in La Palma during the three months of the volcanic eruption, and which were exposed by the territorial director of this service in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Faustino Redondo, during the conference pre-congress of 23rd National Congress of Hospitals and Health Management held on the island, which addressed Health Care in the Context of Crisis. The meeting was organized by the Spanish Society of Health Managers (Sedisa) and the National Association of Nursing Managers (Ande).
In the phase prior to the volcanic eruption on La Palma, the SUC established an entire preventive system that would guarantee maritime evacuations if the airspace was completely closed by ash. To this end, together with the Health Services Management of La Palma, specialized health personnel were pre-alerted for these emergencies and the necessary space for the transfer of emergency ambulances by ship was guaranteed with the shipping companies.
Furthermore, in anticipation that the La Palma General Hospital was overwhelmed, a reserve of beds was maintained during the first week in the Hospital del Sur de Tenerife, in coordination with the Hospital Universitario Nuestra Señora de Candelaria (HUNSC), as it is the closest hospital in the event of a possible maritime evacuation of patients from the island.
The inter-island evacuations were especially complicated, according to Faustino Redondo, due to the difficulties that were registered in the airspace as a result of the volcanic eruption that caused, in a few days, the total closure of it due to the ash, which made it necessary to have to carry out the transport of critical patients by sea or look for alternative means such as the helicopter of the Air Rescue Service.
Faustino Redondo also pointed out that during the first days of the eruption and following the guidelines of the Steering Committee of the Special Plan for Volcanic Risk of the Canary Islands (PEVOLCA), the SUC carried out another 40 evacuations of patients with reduced mobility who lived in evacuated areas of the municipalities of Tazacorte, Los Llanos de Aridane, El Paso and Fuencaliente. These patients were transferred in the ambulance fleet of Non-Urgent Sanitary Transport (TSNU) available on the island to the El Fuerte Barracks, in Breña Baja, where they received the necessary healthcare.
In these military installations, the Canary Islands Emergency Service maintained a preventive assistance device made up of a medicalized ambulance from the SUC with personnel from La Palma Primary Care who assisted the displaced persons at all times. Of these, the SUC was in charge of carrying out the rehousing of 19 patients in new homes of relatives or social health centers.
Once all these relocations were carried out, the SUC had to carry out the restructuring of the treatment routes of the TSNU, based on their new addresses, with the objective that these patients could continue receiving their dialysis, rehabilitation and oncology treatments, among others.
