Sick animals get help faster than our dying mother did
Ambulance took 5 hours to reach heart-attack gran at farm
A FARMING family who waited five hours for an ambulance to help their dying mother say a vet would have attended a sick animal faster.
Tom Roderick, 56, had to watch his mother Valerie, 83, die ‘in agony’ at home following a heart attack while he and his relatives waited for help.
By the time an ambulance arrived, grandmother-of-two Mrs Roderick had already passed away. The family say she was badly let down by the Welsh Ambulance Service, which is investigating.
Mr Roderick, who has a herd of pedigree Herefordshire cattle and 100 sheep on his 85 acres, said: ‘If I call the vet out to one of my calves they are usually here within an hour. But we had to wait for almost five hours after making a 999 call and by that time it was too late.’
Until a year ago widow Mrs Roderick remained active within the village of Scurlage, on the Gower coastline of South Wales. But a stroke left her using a walking frame with blood pressure and heart problems. Her daughter Angela Jones, 57, moved in to stay with her on January 18 as she was suffering from a chest infection. Mrs Jones and Mr Roderick called the family GP three days later when she had problems breathing. The surgery made a 999 call at 12.10pm asking for an ambulance to take Mrs Roderick to hospital 20 miles away in Swansea. When help had still not arrived, Mrs Jones called 999 at 2.40pm. She dialled again just after 3.30pm and said she was told it was on its way. Mrs Jones continued: ‘I was begging them to send an ambulance as quickly as possible – she was in agony...’ But the siblings were forced to look on as their mother died in pain.
Mr Roderick ran to fetch a defibrillator from the surgery and by the time he returned at 5.20pm an on-call local fire crew were on the scene but could not revive Mrs Roderick. An ambulance arrived around ten minutes later.
Mr Roderick, Mrs Jones and their younger sister Jayne Venn, 54, are campaigning for a private ambulance to be stationed nearby.
Louise Platt, the Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust’s interim director of operations, said that an inquiry was under way, adding: ‘It is important that we establish the full circumstances of what happened in this case...’
n Have you had to wait a long time for an ambulance? Email ambulances@dailymail.co.uk