Emergency call operator tragically mocks woman claiming to be in great pain: "You are going to die just like everyone else"
French prosecutors are investigating about a woman who just died after, her distress call to emergency service was mocked by the operator.
Naomi Musenga, 22, called the emergency dispatch number of France complaining about severe stomach aches on December 29 last year.
Her family recently obtained a three-minute call recording of that in which Musenga was moaning with pain while she was heard saying, 'It hurts all over' and 'I am going to die' The Daily Mail reported.
But the female operator on the other side insensitively mocked her saying, 'You're going to die, certainly, one day just like everyone else'.
The female operator then went on to mock Musenga's complaints about the pain to a colleague and eventually told her to call a doctor to visit her house.
Five hours later the emergency services received one more call from Musenga when they finally sent an ambulance to her house to be attended at a hospital in Strasbourg, eastern France. Despite, she died later due to a heart attack.
According to Le Monde, the autopsy of the victim revealed that the cause of the death was multiple organ failures.
'You have to wonder how a human being can ask these types of questions to a dying person,' the victim's sister, Louange Musenga, told France 3 Alsace radio.
The emergency service operator who spoke to Musenga is facing potential charges by the Strasbourg prosecutors that she 'failing to assist a person in danger' She has been suspended from her post.
The family's lawyer said that he would file a lawsuit in the coming days as the doctors waited five days to carry out an autopsy process. 'All we know for now is that there was a quick deterioration of organ functions which led to Naomi's death, but we don't know what caused this rapid failure,' the lawyer, Mohamed Aachour, told AFP. 'Would things have turned out differently if the emergency services had intervened faster?' he asked.
Christphe Gautier, director of Strasbourg's hospital system, said that an investigation had been opened and that he had met with the victim's family.
'We owe them the complete truth concerning the conditions of her care by the emergency services,' he told AFP.
'In 1988, eight million people went to hospital emergency rooms each year. Today's it's 21 million,' Patrick Pelloux, head of the French association of emergency doctors (AMUF) told French daily, Le Parisien.
'At the same time, calls to emergency services have tripled,' which have effectively reduced them to 'call centers', Pelloux said.
The government is already struggling with health services with the shortage of bedding making patients sleep on the floor
Nurses and other workers have also been protesting in recent weeks against overcrowding and staff shortages.