A Carlow Mother says the pressure on emergency services is having a detrimental effect on lives.
Maria Griffin’s two-year-old daughter Skylar was left waiting on an ambulance for over seven hours after she suffered a seizure that left her lifeless last weekend.
Ms Griffin called the emergency services immediately on Friday evening but the ambulance didn’t arrive to their home until 3am the following morning.
The child has since recovered and is doing well at home however Mom Maria is still reeling from the shock of it all as she told The KCLR Daily – hear that here;
Meanwhile, the HSE in its response to queries from KCLR in its statement noted; “We cannot comment on individual cases when to do so might reveal information in relation to identifiable individuals, breaching the ethical requirement on us to observe our duty of confidentiality”.
“Not all 112/999 calls for ambulances are classed as critical emergencies and response times targets which are set out in the HSE’s National Service Plan apply to PURPLE (life threatening cardiac or respiratory arrest) or RED (life threatening illness or injury, other than cardiac arrest) calls only. While non-life threatening calls are distressing for patients or their families, they are not in the highest priority category and therefore response times for these calls may be slower depending on demand at the time. As demand can exceed available resources, 112/999 calls are clinically triaged and prioritised to ensure that those patients with life threatening injuries or conditions receive the fastest response possible.”
“National Service Plan 2024 targets include 75% of 999 PURPLE calls and and 45% of 999 RED calls should be met within 19 minutes. In 2024 these targets were exceeded by the National Ambulance Service despite the volume of daily average AS1 and AS2 (Emergency Ambulance) calls increasing by approximately 15% when comparing the first four months of 2024 to the same timeframe in 2023”.
It’s as hopes are high of getting a new ambulance base on the grounds of Kelvin Grove in Carlow.
Deputy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor says “I put in a request to meet with the Minister, it’s unacceptable as I said to the family when I met them, look we were lucky nothing happened this time but we just can’t allow this to happen, and look I understand the ambulance paramedics themselves are doing a good job and as the family said to me they’re not blaming them but it’s the system, we need to look at the system and how it’s working and if iit has to be changed, we need to change it, no family or child should be left waiting hours for an ambulance, it’s unacceptable, it’s the system is failing us”.
