An 80-year-old woman from Perth has died after waiting two and a half hours for the arrival of an ambulance to her Ashby home.
Grandmother Georgina Wild was found lifeless on her couch with her television still on two and half hours after calling triple-0 for help and reporting that she was experiencing chest pains.
A report by The West Australian revealed that Ms Wild first called for an ambulance at 2.30 am on Sunday morning, before receiving a call from the St John WA call centre 30 minutes later and being informed that there were no ambulances available.
Sadly, Ms Wild did not pick up the next phone call that she received from the St John WA call centre, and it was confirmed that she had died of a heart attack while waiting for paramedics to arrive.
A spokesperson from St John WA issued an apology to Ms Wild’s family and claimed that they would be “undertaking a clinical review of the case”.
Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan stated that waiting two hours for ambulances in an emergency situation was “clearly not acceptable” and claimed that St John WA’s workforce was down by 40% on the evening that Ms Wild died.
“There are opportunities for St John to use the critical worker definitions. They haven’t used them even though we have urged them to do so,” said the Premier.
“There is also opportunity under what’s called the business continuity plan for St John to request assistance, for instance by our DFES (Department of Fire and Emergency Services) personnel who are trained in first aid and those sorts of things, to drive ambulances with a qualified paramedic.
“At the point in time that this incident occurred they had not requested that.”
