Patient dies after hospital hold-ups

Yesterday a 79-year old heart attack patient was left lying for an hour in an ambulance in front of 9 hospitals in Czestochowa, as there was no room for him in any of them. When a bed was finally found in Sosnowiec, 70 kilometers away, the man died. "My father might still be alive today, if he had been found a hospital bed sooner," said the dead man's daughter. Jacek Brendzel, deputy director of city hospitals in Czestochowa, justified this situation by saying that they could not take a respirator from another patient. Czestochowa Mayor Tadeusz Wrona yesterday suspended director of city hospitals Bernard Rajczyk and deputy director Brendzel. "I obliged the director in December to comply with the rule that all patients should be accepted by a hospital," explained the mayor. (Gazeta Wyborcza, pp. 1, 4) M.M.