Covid, Nas checks on ambulances: irregularities and unvaccinated personnel discovered

A total of 160 out of 1300 ambulances were found to be irregular during the Nas checks carried out as part of the health security strategy implemented during the current period of pandemic emergency from Covid-19. Nine vehicles were seized. The campaign to check the safety and hygiene standards of ambulances at national level carried out by the Carabinieri for the Protection of Health, in agreement with the Ministry of Health, involved a total of 1,297 ambulances employed in emergency services – health urgency and in the transport of infirm, identifying 160 vehicles that do not comply with the regulations governing the correct provision of the service and the safety of operators and patients on board. In this context, 52 criminal and 113 administrative violations relating to safety in the workplace, lack of suitable cleaning and sanitizing procedures for medical equipment, presence of rusty and encrusted parts, use of vehicles without authorizations and requirements for carry out the transport of patients adequately. 29 violations are attributable to the failure to adopt fire prevention and overhaul systems for fire extinguishers, while a further 20 relate to the possession, on board the vehicles or as warehouse stocks, of drugs, oxygen cylinders and medical devices that have expired of validity. During the checks, 154 packs of drugs were seized, including painkillers and anesthetics, and 38 cylinders of medicinal oxygen, all of which expired; the same motivation determined the constraint of 464 medical devices (needle-cannulas, anesthesia and oxygen masks, tubes and infusion sets), equally important for immediate first aid or treatment on the vehicle of patients in need. Among the most striking episodes, elusive techniques were detected by the Carabinieri of the Nas to avoid the control of ambulances irregularly used for the transport of the sick as well as lung ventilators connecting to cylinders containing medicinal oxygen with an expiration date even beyond July 2018. investigations highlighted nursing and auxiliary staff employed on board emergency-urgency ambulances, without qualifications and basic first aid courses, in other cases not yet subjected to anti-Covid vaccination. Precisely because of serious hygienic-managerial deficiencies and the use of unsuitable means for health activities, measures were carried out to suspend the activity with a ban on the use of 9 ambulances belonging to private companies operating in the sector, for a value of 500 thousand euros