A judge is investigating a residence in Barcelona that the Prosecutor’s Office has denounced for hiding an outbreak of salmonellosis in 2022 in which eight elderly people died and for neglecting their obligations, causing a “serious health risk” for the other residents with their “irresponsible” conduct “.
As reported by the Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday, the investigating court number 17 of Barcelona has opened proceedings as a result of his complaint, directed against the administrator and manager of the nursing home, the director, the housekeeper, the doctor and the merchant, for eight crimes of serious negligence resulting in death.
In its letter, advanced by El Periódico, the Prosecutor’s Office details that from the end of July to the beginning of September 2022 the Barcelona residence -with 100 places, 57 of them public-, suffered an outbreak of acute salmonella gastroenteritis that affected 39 residents , caused the hospitalization of 15 and the death of eight elderly people.
For the Prosecutor’s Office, the “omissive behavior” of the residence, by not having “adopted the most elementary measures of attention, diligence and collaboration” with the epidemiological technicians in the face of the serious health crisis that occurred in the nursing home, “contributed” to the aggravation of the outbreak and directly generated “a high risk of infection transmission” and other health problems for residents, “with lethal consequences” for some of them.
The defendants, with “non-compliance with the rules of care” to which they were obliged due to their responsibility, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, “did not adopt or urge” the adoption of the hygienic-sanitary actions proposed by the epidemiological technicians, “disregarding the obligations that were incumbent on them in the face of a particularly serious illness when it affects people with extreme vulnerability”, such as the elderly.
“With their irresponsible conduct, they placed all the residents in a situation of serious health risk, minimizing the impact or importance of the outbreak, denying the existence of other cases other than those reported by the CAP, administering medication that had not been prescribed with the spurious purpose of covering up the symptoms, hiding new cases… even the deaths that occurred due to the disease,” the complaint states.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, by ignoring the recommendations of the epidemiological and health authorities to control the outbreak and those affected, those responsible for the nursing home demonstrated “absolute indifference to the health and lives” of the elderly in the residence.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, despite the fact that SEPID gave the residence the sanitary instructions to follow, the nursing home did not comply with them, therefore, throughout the investigation process, “the lack of hygiene, the lack of disinfection material and The lack of protective equipment” to carry out a correct “disinfection” of spaces and hygiene of people to prevent the spread of the outbreak “was a constant”.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the “degree of obstruction and lack of collaboration” reached “such an extreme” that those responsible for the residence stopped writing down all the health information of the residents in the records, collecting only “inconsequential” facts such as program visits or diaper changes.
In addition, the Prosecutor’s Office maintains that the doctor at the residence prescribed an antibiotic to some of the elderly, without stating any medical reason to justify it, since it was only due to “concealment and obstruction reasons” in the detection of cases in the face of health authorities, which “favored” transmission between residents.
The Prosecutor’s Office also details that when the inspectors went to the residence in September of last year “a generalized lack of hygiene” of “long evolution” was observed in the furniture, sinks, showers, switches and elevator buttons.
As an example, he describes that the shower chairs had brown dirt around the bottom area, there was vomit-like debris in one of the sinks, and most of the dining room tables were sticky.
