Yousaf must give NHS a shake-up

SCOTLAND’S 999 ambulance crews are everyday heroes.

They devote their lives to saving others – and deserve nothing but praise.

But a lack of resources and an apparent failure of management has left our ambulance service at breaking point.

We report today how one man died in his own driveway after waiting four and a half hours for an ambulance.

At the other side of the country a woman waited eight hours after she had a stroke. In both cases the families involved have been through hell.

If resources are a problem the Scottish Government must come up with the money to help our 999 crews.

It simply cannot be the case that Scotland can have heart and stroke “death zones” where the chances of dying are greater than they are elsewhere because patients cannot get to hospital in time.

Rural areas have always been more of the problem in terms of the numbers of ambulances available and staff to operate them. But this has to end.

A huge part of the problem is at hospitals where ambulances are sometimes queuing up for hours to hand over patients to already frazzled hospital staff.

While paramedics are waiting at A&E departments they are not out on the road attending to those whose lives are often hanging in the balance.

Health Secretary Humza Yousaf needs to shake up the NHS. More available beds in our hospitals would allow the rapid flow of patients through emergency departments. This, in turn, would have the knock-on effect of freeing up paramedics to do the job they are trained to do – saving lives on the frontline.

People shouldn’t be dying for an ambulance.