Pensioner waits an hour after falling

Pensioner waits an hour after falling

25 May 2016

AN elderly lady who fell in Downpatrick’s Market Street yesterday afternoon had to wait almost an hour for medical help to arrive.

The woman who is in her eighties and who is believed to have sustained head and arm injuries, fell around 1.45pm.

Staff from nearby shops put a blanket around the lady’s legs and a pillow at her back and remained with her with until a paramedic arrived in an emergency response vehicle at 2.40pm. Five minutes later an ambulance which had been despatched from Belfast arrived, subsequently transferring the woman to the casualty department at the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald.

Down Community Health Committee chairman, Eamonn McGrady, who was one of several people who comforted the lady, said the incident happened on the eve of a new Health Minister being appointed at Stormont.

He declared: “On Monday we had the Chief Medical Officer talking about health inequality; well the people of Downpatrick do not feel very equal today and would the Ambulance Service like to tell us how many times they have breached the eight minute waiting time for responding to 999 calls in this district over the past four weeks?

“It is my understanding the ambulance which arrived came from Belfast. The paramedics who helped this lady are frontline staff who do their level best and everything we expect of those who work in the NHS. They are heroes and they are heroes today working with this lady who fell.”

Mr McGrady called on the new Health Minister to put in place the necessary arrangements to ensure the local community and others like it are not left “abandoned again.”

He continued: “The new minister must ensure we do not have something like this on a Tuesday at lunchtime in the centre of a large town where someone has to wait over 45 minutes for an ambulance.

“Sadly, this is not the first time something like this has happened in Downpatrick. We all hope everything goes well for this lovely lady who spent 40 years working in the NHS, serving our local community and continuing a fine family tradition of service.”

Mr McGrady added: “Something now has to be done to resolve the ambulance situation in our area before lives are lost. There were many distressed people in Market Street making telephone calls to get this woman help. 

“What happened was not the fault of the paramedics, but there has to be an equitable distribution of services across the whole of the North; even people who live outside Belfast need ambulances occasionally. This is Downpatrick, a major county town and look what has happened today.”

An Ambulance Service spokesman said the organisation received a call in relation to a lady in her eighties having fallen and sustained a head injury in the street in Downpatrick at 1.47pm, with a paramedic arriving at 2.40pm — 53 minutes later.

“The Ambulance Trust would like to apologise to the lady for the delay in arriving at the incident. We understand how distressing this must have been for her and we will make contact within the next few days to issue a personal apology,” he said.

“At the time of the incident, the Ambulance Service was dealing with five emergency calls in the South Down area and, as a result, all our resources in Downpatrick and the surrounding area were engaged on other calls.”

The spokesman added: “We seek to respond to every emergency call as quickly as possible and obviously fell well short of even our own expectations on this occasion.”