On Friday evening, her one-year-old son’s fever shot up to more than 40 degrees. Lilli Christoph-Homberg first resorted to calf wraps to remove the heat from her small body. When the temperature still hadn’t dropped after a long, restless night, the parents called for medical advice – from the pediatrician’s on-call service. He directed them to Offenbach because there were long waiting times in Frankfurt, so the parents drove to the neighboring town with their feverish son.
But a long queue had already formed in front of the on-call service for sick children and young people in the rooms of the Sana Clinic. “We stood outside for an hour until we could register, then we had to wait inside for another two hours,” says Lilli Christoph-Homberg. Sick, feverish children were sitting everywhere: on the floor or on their parents’ laps in a waiting room that was far too small. “I thought that we would get all the viruses that we didn’t bring with us ourselves,” remembers the mother, who was one of the few to wear the recommended health mask. One doctor alone had to look after all the families and rushed from one of the four treatment cabins to the next. “Before I had a child, I didn’t know how bad the supply situation was,” says Christoph-Homberg.