“No vital signs and no response to verbal or physical stimuli.” This is how conscript Franco Vargas arrived in a military truck on the morning of April 27 at the Family Health Center (Cesfam) in Putre, after fainting twice in an 8-kilometer training march carried out by the “Huamachuco” Motorized Brigade, from the Pacollo training center, located 4,200 meters above sea level, to the town of Putre.
The information was confirmed this morning by the director of Cesfam, Aldo Rivera in an extraordinary session of the Putre Municipal Council, headed by Mayor Javier Tito. The instance was called at the request of the councilors themselves, given the public connotation that the case of the military brigade located in that foothills town has had.
The manager made a detailed chronology of the type of assistance provided to the soldier, confirming that the young man arrived died in a van to the medical facility and not in a military ambulance.
According to his report, Franco Vargas entered Cesfam at 6:52 in the morning. The military personnel who transported him from Pacollo, he said, arrived in a van, knocked on the door of the facility and were received by 2 paramedics on duty. Then, the paramedics had to perform 6 life cycles of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. In the meantime, the doctor on duty, Sergio Araya, was urgently summoned, who at 7:12 a.m. confirmed that the soldier had died.
“According to the records of the rural emergency system, a patient is received without prior notice. The attention of a conscript who was transferred was received by means of a military vehicle. “It is confirmed that this person came without vital signs and did not respond to verbal or physical stimuli,” he said.
In two moments, Rivera emphasized that this emergency was not alerted “in advance” by the Army to Cesfam. If notified in advance, the venue’s protocol would have required a high-resolution ambulance to be sent to the place of the march where the soldier fainted.
In his presentation, the manager stated that “after 6 cycles of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the doctor on duty proceeds to declare the death of the conscript and then proceeds to carry out all the corresponding procedures.”
The Cesfam version contradicts what was stated by the Army itself, an entity that in the first official statement it released on the afternoon of April 27 stated that the soldier was stabilized after he fainted. The military communication maintains in its note that “while taking a break, a conscript soldier presented respiratory problems, being immediately transferred by vehicle to the infirmary of the training facility, where he was stabilized by the military nurse and later transferred to Cesfam in the commune of Putre, where unfortunately his death was confirmed.”
Rivera confirmed that the information made known to the Municipal Council will be incorporated into a report requested by the Comptroller General of the Republic to the municipality, whose delivery deadline is next Thursday.
Likewise, he pointed out that the Military Prosecutor’s Office has already contacted him and the medical personnel who treated Franco Vargas, through Carabineros, in order to take statements within the process that was opened in military justice for this death.
Low military attention
Despite the testimonies of the conscripts who were already discharged from the Putre military brigade, regarding the fact that there were many soldiers sick with respiratory and digestive problems, the military unit decided to manage its health crisis inside, without resorting to Cesfam.
The attendance figures for the month of April reveal this, since of the 418 registered, only 4 corresponded to military personnel. And of those, 3 were reported on April 27 when Franco Vargas died, an occasion in which it was decided to transfer 2 patients to the Arica hospital and the military unit ordered the isolation of another 45 soldiers in this city.
Discharge and other operation
Today it was also known that the last of 4 soldiers admitted to the Psychiatry Unit of the Juan Noé Hospital would be discharged. His mother arrived this morning from Santiago to visit him and speed up the discharge procedures at the institution.
Likewise, a new air operation is planned that will take another 30 recruits from Arica to Santiago, after renouncing the military service that they began on April 11.
