Help sent by Germany benefits Chinese-owned Lisbon hospital
Dinora Januarios says that she experienced the worst day of her life less than four weeks ago. The young nurse had just started her shift in the intensive care unit at the Hospital de Santa Maria in Lisbon, which is the biggest in the Portuguese capital. As the coordinating nurse, she was in charge of dealing with all new admissions. She recalls how terrible it was because the ambulances just kept arriving. At one point, there were 41 vehicles waiting in front of the emergency department.
"All of a sudden, it felt like we were in a war zone," she remembers. "I had to help decide at the entrance who we could still admit and who not. The people were lying there in the ambulances, without enough oxygen; they could barely breathe. It was unbearable."