Aalst mayor Christoph D’Haese wants Brussels coron …

Aalst Mayor Christoph D’Haese (N-VA) wants to be able to refuse corona patients from Brussels in the future. ‘The limits of our medical solidarity have been reached’, D’Haese told VRT. “That goes against the federal guideline to spread patients,” says Mac Noppen, CEO of UZ Brussel.

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Because the Brussels hospitals with their current capacity can no longer cope with the influx of covid-19 patients, many of the new patients end up for admission to the General Municipal Hospital (ASZ) and the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw Hospital (OLV) in Aalst . This leads to concern among Christoph D’Haese (N-VA), head of the crisis cell in Aalst and chairman of ASZ.

He fears that infected residents of Aalst will no longer be able to get medical care in their own region due to the increasing crowds. ‘It goes without saying that people need to be helped. But there are limits to medical solidarity. I believe that limit has now been reached. I reasonably assume that the basic principle should be that an Aalst patient should be able to go to an Aalster hospital, which is also the most medically responsible, I think ‘, D’Haese tells VRT.

Doubts about validity

Marc Noppen, CEO of UZ Brussel, does not understand why D’Haese wants an admission stop of Brussels patients. ‘A strange decision, because it goes against the federal guideline to spread as many patients as possible, precisely to prevent hospitals from becoming overloaded as in the first wave,’ says Noppen. Noppen also has doubts about the validity of the unilateral decision. ‘I don’t think it is possible unless you report this to the federal emergency services, because that means that the 112 are no longer allowed to come to the hospitals in Aalst. I find that very odd and don’t even know if this is possible, so selectively close the doors. Unless you have a good reason for that, but they still have capacity for covid-19 patients. We know those figures, ‘explains Noppen.

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