A top Russian doctor plunged 50 feet from her office window during a government conference call on Saturday after being told her hospital would have to take in Chinese coronavirus patients without the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE), according to local media reports.
Dr. Yelena Nepomnyashchaya, 47, reportedly objected to plans proposed by the regional Minister of Health Boris Nemik to give 80 beds to coronavirus patients because of an “acute shortage” of PPE for her hospital’s doctors and nurses.
The mother-of-two, who runs the Krasnoyarsk Regional Hospital for War Veterans in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia, fell from the building as the discussion ensued. It is unclear whether the fall was intentional. The deputy head of the Krasnoyarsk regional government, Aleksey Podkorytov, maintained that there could be any number of explanations for the incident.
“So many things could have happened,” he speculated in an interview with TVK Krasnoyarsk. “It could have been because it was Spring, the overall stress, something in her family. It’s difficult to say what could have happened. There was nothing extraordinary happening at the time, just a routine conference call with doctors’ reports.”
“If we were to fail after each routine conference call this would have not led to anything good. At the time (of the accident) there were no patients with coronavirus, yet the hospital was on high alert with all necessary equipment in place,” he continued. “She just reported that there were no coronavirus patients. They, in fact, started to be admitted into the hospital, but only a very few with the lightest form of the virus.”
As in most countries, the issue of PPE shortages has caused conflict within Russia’s medical community, with several top doctors quitting their jobs in protest. This anger has been exacerbated by the fact that Moscow is preparing to send another 40-ton shipment of medicine to the Maduro regime in Venezuela, which relies heavily on the Putin regime for its survival.
TVK Krasnoyarks reports that Nepomnyashchaya is currently fighting for her life in intensive care, with The Moscow Times described her condition as “critical.” Police have now launched an investigation into the incident, although they have reportedly found no signs so far of criminal activities.
The incident follows a spate of government dissenters mysteriously falling out of buildings in Russia over the past decade. The most recent case was that of the 32-year-old investigative journalist Maxim Borodin, who was thrown out of a fourth-floor window as he was investigating Russian involvement in Syria.
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