The ASZ is one of the two large hospitals in Aalst and the situation is almost untenable due to the increasing number of hospital admissions of corona patients. On Monday there will be scaling up again, but there is no more extra staff and the beds are running out.
The VTM NEWS team visited the department where people lie on heart-lung machines and spoke with a nurse from the intensive care department who aspirates the patients and removes mucus from the lungs. A process that all patients undergo daily.
Dangerous
Almost all of those patients are in a coma, though one in ten no longer wakes up, physiotherapists are already working on recovery for everyone. “We try to keep them as mobile as possible, so that they can immediately do exercises when they wake up,” says physiotherapist Lise De Wael.
One of the patients is Ingrid De Plus. She never really took the virus seriously. But now that she can only get out of bed with great difficulty, she realizes that it is indeed dangerous. “It’s only when you’re here that you know how bad it is. Everyone knows me as a very spirited person. But it completely cracked me. Sorry ”, she sobbed.
–
