EKAB fined 388,000 euros for driver death
A Patras court has ordered the National First Aid Center (EKAB) to pay 388,000 euros to the family of a taxi driver who died in a car accident on the grounds that the ambulance staff failed to take action that may have saved his life, according to a press report published yesterday. Local newspaper Peloponnisos said that the court ruled against the two-member ambulance crew, who happened to be driving past the accident scene in 1998, because they could have done more to save the driver, Christos Panayiotopoulos, who was trapped inside his car. The EKAB staff notified another ambulance and rescue operators in order to cut the trapped man out of the vehicle but did not do enough to help him stop losing blood, such as wrapping a blanket around a serious leg wound, the court said.
