Two and a half years after the discovery that gave rise to the so-called Canary Islands Ambulance Patches case, another expired children’s defibrillator reappears with the date manipulated in a public health transport base. On this occasion, it was in Tenerife, in a room that the private clinic Hospiten Sur makes available to the public company Gestión de Servicios para la Salud y Seguridad en Canarias (GSC).
The events were reported Thursday morning to the Adeje National Police station by an employee of the Tasisa company, contractor of this public service. The employee went to the police station at the end of his 24-hour shift and provided the photographs to the officers. He had found the allegedly counterfeit patch the day before at eight a.m., as he began his day in an advanced life support ambulance, a UVI mobile.
According to the complaint accessed by this newspaper, the employee realized at that time that a ZOLL brand defibrillator patch (used for cardiopulmonary resuscitation of boys and girls up to eight years old) had expired since 2022, but had been covered with a new sticker that extended the expiration date by six years, to May 5, 2028.
The date of the manipulated label is relevant, since it is the same one that appeared on the defibrillator patches found by the complainant of the case in Gran Canaria (a delegate for the prevention of occupational risks of the Health Emergency Transport Union -SITES-) on July 20, 2023, origin of the investigation which has been continuing for two years at the Court of Instruction 3 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for alleged crimes of document falsification and against public health.
In April this year, the multinational Health Transportation Group (HTGroup), parent company of Tasisa, winner of several prizes for the emergency medical transport service in the Canary Islands, informed worker representatives that it was excluding from the company the three people under investigation for these events. Two of them, the manager (JPML) and the area manager and material resources supervisor (NML) ended up being fired and sued the company for it. Labor trials are scheduled for March and May 2026.
The third person investigated by the company is the administrative assistant responsible for requests and supply of medical supplies (MLJR), who, in his statement before the investigating judge last October, named his hierarchical superior (NML). During this appearance, he said that his boss had admitted to him that he had manipulated the patches and that he had even bragged about it, an assertion that the accused denied.
In addition to expelling the three employees from the company under investigation, HTGroup reported at the time that, given these suspicions of tampering, it had ordered that all pediatric patches be removed from its ambulances and replaced.
Email to company
After learning of the appearance of another children’s defibrillator with the manipulated date in Tenerife, a SITES representative informed the company. “I think it is obvious that the elimination work carried out has not been effective, therefore I reiterate that this new management has the necessary means to eradicate this problem and the alleged crime for which the company is being judged,” the email said.
On the union side, they explain that the public company GSC has an agreement with Hospiten whereby the private company gives it a room in the hospital so that the ambulance personnel can rest and store equipment. “Nearly 80% of the equipment” used in these medical transport vehicles is provided by the clinic, the workers emphasize. On the other hand, Tasisa (HTGroup) is directly responsible for the distribution of patches for defibrillators or HEPA filters, for example.
Asked about the discovery this week, official HTGroup sources say that it is not a “new fact”, since “it is linked to the judicial investigation currently in progress”. “The company has activated all the corresponding protocols and procedures to detect these situations by the different managers,” they add.
Background of the case
The so-called Patches affair was opened in August 2023, following a complaint to the National Police from the Sites’ prevention delegate who noted several pediatric patches being manipulated. During the investigation and searches in the ambulance bases and offices of Tasisa, the Economic and Fiscal Crime Unit (UDEF) of the Police detected expired or deteriorated medicines and medical supplies in the ambulances of this company (both in the basic ones and in the sanitized or medicalized ones), the absence of essential medicines to treat patients or equipment in poor condition.
The UDEF reports speak of “therapeutic gaps,” with particular mention of the “habitual insufficiency” of insulin and other medications that either were not in the ambulances or did not meet contract specifications, creating a risk for patients.
Regarding pediatric patches, some were found relabeled with a date extension, such as those that gave rise to the initial complaint in Gran Canaria or the last one in Tenerife, but also others for which there was a change of brand.
During the investigation, the national police collected emails from workers who had already warned years before about the lack of life-saving medicines and that some ambulances did not meet the minimum requirements to operate. In one of these messages, a health worker even informed the company that a vehicle must remain inoperable to avoid negligence.
In these reports, UDEF describes the controls exercised by the GSC company over ambulances as “extremely relaxed and apathetic”. And he gave the example of one of them, disinfected, which was not inspected again after an examination detected more than a hundred defects.
In the case heard by the Court of Instruction 3 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, there is also a report from the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) which describes the use of expired defibrillation patches in pediatric patients as a “very serious health risk”, because in the event of cardiac arrest “their proper functioning cannot be ensured”.
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