‘Invest in ambulances or lives will be lost,’ council meeting hears

THERE needs to be further investment into the ambulance fleet or lives will be lost, a north Cork Fianna Fáil councillor told colleagues at Monday’s meeting of Cork County Council.

Councillor Deirdre O’Brien made this assertion as she proposed a motion calling for an investigation into the workings of the Ambulance Service by the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly.

Describing the Ambulance Service as ‘not bad, it is broken’, Ms O’Brien said it was increasingly under strain due to reduced hours for SouthDoc in north Cork.

“We now have ambulances being called out for non-emergency cases because what could be treated by a GP in SouthDoc is now a call to the ambulance team. The call taker is not medically trained, it’s probably vague and what’s worse is the patient could Google it themselves,” said Ms O’Brien.

“This means our ambulance service is being called out for non-life-threatening conditions which are now treated in the same category as an emergency, heart attack or stroke call.”

Cllr O’Brien said that because the Ambulance Service works to a central system “This could mean no ambulance is available to us when an emergency occurs. Huge, long waiting times can be experienced by the callers”.

“The ambulance is never in Fermoy, it is diverted to Mallow, Clonmel or Dungarvan regularly to cover for staff in these centres. The staff are exhausted, they’re expected to cover 100km distance at one time.”

Ms O’Brien said once the ambulance had picked up a patient in any of these other towns and taken the patient to a hospital in Cork or possibly Waterford, it’s often asked to stay there and cover calls in the vicinity for the rest of the night or day shift. According to Ms O’Brien, this means they can’t go back to Fermoy or wherever they originally came from.

“This begs the question, who is to look after people in these areas. There needs to be further investment into the fleet to save lives or lives will be lost if this continues.”

Ms O’Brien said that while SouthDoc tells people that each county has its own SouthDoc service and to stay ‘in county’, she regularly sees Fire Service personnel attending the scene of an accident because the ambulance is away on another call.

Several councillors spoke in support of Ms O’Brien’s motion. West Cork councillor, Declan Hurley, told of an incident which occurred in his area a few weeks ago in which a patient turned up at a GP’s surgery feeling unwell. “The person ended up having to be escorted from the GP practice by firefighters to an air ambulance helicopter because there was no ambulance available in West Cork to take him to hospital,” said the independent councillor.

“Our health service is in a deplorable situation, lives are at risk and action needs to be taken.”