On 23 January 2002, journalists “Gazeta Wyborcza” and “Redia Łódź” revealed that workers of the Łódź Emergency Service had been mass-selling information about patients' deaths to ceremony facilities for many years, earning immense money at the same time – much bigger than working in the ambulance. ceremony bets then increased the ceremony price by the amount of bribery given to the physicians. Today, 1 of the co-authors of a loud reportage returns to the matter. In the book “Skin Hunters. Secrets of the crime in the Łódź Emergency” describes the scenes of the investigation and reveals unknown, frightening facts – from the author.
The Open Publishing home thanks you for sharing a passage for publication. We encourage you to read the full book.
“If the patient dies, the doctor should declare the death and fill out the papers – primarily the death certificate, and return to the ambulance. but the household stays with the problem. According to sanitary regulations, the body cannot lie at home long. We have a free market, so it is up to the loved ones to take and store the body, and then to prepare the ceremony and the burial itself. The household calls the factory, the caravan comes, the body goes to the cold store. Where's the leather place? In detail, due to the fact that almost no 1 has a close head to prowl. quite a few people don't know what to do. Doctor, paramedic, driver should explain the procedure. The thing is, they can besides give the telephone to the company. They can even call the plant right away.”
What if the household doesn't ask? Then – as in trade – the creative overcome.
“Professor will not say that a ceremony company will come due to the fact that relatives can say: “We do not wish”, explained 1 entrepreneur based on his own experience. – Instead, they hear, “Please, the transport will arrive and take the body to the cold store” or “I order you to carry the body”. “The average despairing man thinks it’s a further part of the procedure,” the entrepreneur pulled. A doctor, an orderly or a driver comes out and calls, then 2 sad gentlemen come in. They do not appear but say: “Please sign the documents”. Not many people are reading papers right now. They're signing. It is only on the second day that they look at where they are to come, get the remainder of the formalities, and see that it is not an emergency, but a funeral." And people didn't announcement that they signed the agreement to organize the ceremony and that if they pulled out, they'd pay so much and so much. They don't want to argue due to the fact that the deceased, the tragedy – you know.” ...
Over the years and with the increase in ingenuity has increased, and participants have begun to exceed further ethical boundaries. The dispatchers made informal arrangements with the rescue teams: I'll be the first to know about the death, I'll send an ambulance for your skin, you fire the lot. ...
“Who are you riding with?” is simply a question we opened up to talk to another people in the ambulance. It was not about colleagues in the ambulance, it was about a deal with a station dispatcher and a circumstantial ceremony company that they sale death information to. It was apparent to the bare eye that the device of the information trade about deaths was much more extended than we assumed.
Almost everyone was dealing, and erstwhile we asked who, in particular, we heard, "I'll tell you more rapidly who doesn't."
After that, it rained virtually respective repeated names by subsequent informants. The Angel of Death, the Skintrap, Doctor Potassium, Mengele. During the next talks, sinister aliases of doctors and paramedics were increasingly reaching us. Our informants did not regulation out that in a planet that revolves around money from ceremony sites nicknames may be an innocent form of black humor, but at the same time the number of cases described to us was expanding inexplicable from a medical point of view of the activities of ambulance teams ending in the death of the patient. ...
The administration of pavulon took place through the venflon. The substance worked from administration to death for about 5 minutes. After administration, about half a minute later, the patient began to be restless, something screamed, began to peel off the oxygen mask, and yet ripped it off. She started to relax and choke. (...) At 1 point I said to Kolski, “Doctor, see, something is happening to the patient”. present I find it hard to tell why I called him, but I think that these were any remnants of remorse, or the desire to share – in a sense – responsibility.
Kolski ordered him to stop, went to the back of the ambulance and, as I recall, did not undertake any rescue operations. He was kind of waiting for the patient to die. The patient was in prison the full time. She wasn't moving. She died or died.
Kolski listened to her with his phone, checking the female pupils, making certain she was dead. However, he did not take any action, said to the driver Mark, “Come, we will put her on a stretcher.” (...) The ambulance went with the bodies at the home of the killed woman, where the orderly Nowicki informed her husband of the death. At the same time, he suggested to a distraught man that he would “carry the body into a cold store.” The squad graciously agreed to take the widower aboard an ambulance with his wife's body and went to the Black Rose company. "I behaved like an actor: I expressed my sympathy and calmed him," he described. After taking the body to the cold store, he picked up PLN 1,000 from the plant, sharing the money as usual with the driver, doctor and dispatcher.
Prosecutor Robert Tarsalewski followed the blow and asked about Wiesław S., a mentally sick but physically healthy man about whom the case was loudly alert.
“I callback this case, indeed,” Nowicki said. This man was dull, wearing light clothes, went down to the ambulance alone.
At any point, I decided to inject him with pavulon. due to the fact that he didn't have venflon, I utilized a syringe.
I tried to inject myself into a vein, but I think I gave any into a vein and any into a muscle. I came to the conclusion that after killing this patient there would be no problem getting the money due to the fact that he was taken from home and was able to contact his family.
photo of Open Publishing House
