A 47-year-old man has died while waiting more than 40 minutes for an ambulance in Adelaide.
Key points:
- A man called triple zero while suffering chest pain, but the ambulance arrived half an hour later
- He died from cardiac arrest
- The SA Premier has described the death as ‘tragic’
The man, who was suffering chest pain, called triple zero at 5:19 pm on Monday, after pulling over on Anzac Highway at Plympton.
The state’s Ambulance Employees Association said 35 minutes later, bystanders noticed the man was unresponsive and began giving him CPR.
The union said the case was upgraded to a priority one, and the first paramedic arrived at 6:01pm, 42 minutes after the initial triple zero call.
The patient was unable to be resuscitated.
The SA Ambulance Service (SAAS) has been contacted for comment and is expected to release a statement about the case.
The union said at the time of the case, the SAAS had declared an “Opstat White” – with 20 urgent cases left uncovered across the metropolitan area.
It said ambulance crews had been ramped for three hours at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and for six hours at the Flinders Medical Centre.
Witness Chady Hamra was working across the road when he saw the man going into cardiac arrest.
“We couldn’t really see what was happening… we could see people standing around someone,” Mr Hamra said.
“I think something needs to be done about it, someone’s life just got taken.
“It’s pretty tragic to wait that long, and it’s not far [ambulance units] from here.
“We’re not out in the country, we are in the city… you’d expect within five or ten minutes if that.
“It was terrible, my wife was in tears when we heard.”
Premier says death is ‘beyond tragic’
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas said the circumstances of the case were “beyond tragic”, and that an investigation would be conducted.
“A man, a relatively young man, has tragically lost their life under circumstances that might have been preventable,” Mr Malinauskas said.
“I think every South Australian knows that my government has made it clear that addressing ambulance ramping, which has consequences in terms of ambulance response times, is a priority of ours which is why literally as we speak, we are dramatically ramping up the resources within the ambulance service so they don’t spend their time ramped up and spend their time responding to call-outs as quickly as possible.
“We saw over the course of the last four years ambulance response times collapse. In no small part, that was a function of ramping, which is why we’ve got a policy to reduce ramping.”
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