Despite the issue of the failure of the ambulance service provider to deliver being raised almost daily, on Monday evening another of our citizens, a 29-year-old woman died waiting for an ambulance that never showed, and there is no word from the Ministry of Health on this alarming state of affairs. What is worse in this case is the victim's husband had the means to take her to the hospital that was three minutes away and wanted to, but was instructed by the ambulance dispatch personnel that he was not to move her, that an ambulance was on its way.
Over half an hour later the same dispatch had to inform him that an ambulance was in fact not coming, and the time it took to take her to the hospital himself, it was already too late.
Sources within the ambulance service said that of the 42 supposedly rostered units that were “available” yesterday, only nine were functional.
T&T requires at least 126 fully-functional, manned and equipped ambulances deployed throughout all 41 constituencies to be considered in a state of readiness to be able to answer distress calls throughout the country within a reasonable time. For us to be considered first world, those “transport only” units would all have to include fully-trained ER paramedics and be outfitted with full trauma gear, medical supplies and equipment.
We have placed our citizens in a position where the ambulance service can no longer be trusted as a first responder in any emergency and that they should fend for themselves should the worst occur. Unacceptable in the extreme, the State is now complicit in that woman’s death, guilty of holding out hope for an emergency service that does not in fact exist.
Our people are dying because of this, and it is a failure of the Government that this is allowed to continue.
Phillip Edward Alexander