Paris's Massive Medical System Recounts France's Worst Terror Attacks

Three suicide attackers blew themselves up outside the Stade de France on November 13, 2015. The Paris hospital system first learned of the coming horror around 9:30 pm, when it was alerted to the explosions. Then came news of the shootings at the Bataclan concert hall as well as at bars and restaurants in a hip neighborhood of east Paris, where nearly all the 130 victims were killed.

A medical personnel said, "The medics treating the scores of victims in the Paris terror attacks came back without their belts, so great was the need in the field for tourniquets. And when the wounded began to arrive at the city's hospitals some doctors thought it was the extension of a drill earlier the same day practicing their response, in a cruel irony, to a mass shooting."

‘Paris was hit by one of the worst terror attacks on November 13, 2015. Never before had so many victims reached the hospital and so many wounded been operated on so urgently. But, within 24 hours all emergency surgeries were completed, and the medical teams were almost ready to cope with another attack that authorities feared could occur.’

The harrowing details come from the most detailed recounting yet of the response inside Paris's massive medical system as it was hit by France's worst terror attacks. An emergency doctor in the account published in The Lancet said, "We didn't know how and when this nightmare would end. Despite their brutality and appalling human toll, the attacks were not a surprise."

Following the deadly shootings at satirical paper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery 10-months prior, all state departments had known that a multi-site shooting could happen.

An hour after the first warning, the hospital system called in all staff to deal with the wave of patients. Many physicians and nurses had already turned up spontaneously to help.

The wounded, most of them under the age of 40 years, came pouring in. Most had mostly bullet wounds. And many needed surgery, quickly. An anesthesiologist said, "Never before had such a number of victims been reached and so many wounded been operated on so urgently. A new threshold has been crossed. Patients arrived in groups and were triaged even before they were inside the hospital. Within 24 hours all emergency surgeries had been completed. The hospital was nearly ready to cope with another attack that we all feared could occur."

The timing of the attacks may have played a role in the ability to mount a massive medical response. During the working day doctors and staff would have been busy already. Nearly every patient who made it to the hospitals, either by ambulance or under their own power, survived. Doctors recorded four deaths, two of them on arrival at the hospital.

Source: AFP