The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
SNP urged to speak on crisis
Nicola Sturgeon and her government have been urged to address the country over the ambulance service crisis.
The first minister has called in the Army with the NHS in Scotland “at breaking point”.
Scottish Conservative Stephen Kerr accused the Scottish Government of putting up a “wall of silence” over the crisis.
People have endured excruciatingly long waits – including a 65-year-old man who died after a 40hour wait for an ambulance.
Neither Health Secretary Humza Yousaf nor the Scottish Government’s national clinical director Jason Leitch would go on BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show to discuss the issue.
In an interview for the BBC last night, Mr Yousaf said the government would work to increase the numbers of GPs able to see patients face-to-face but did not directly address the ambulance crisis.
He will update the Scottish Parliament this week on the deployment.
Mr Kerr, said: “As the mistakes mount up each day, this scandalous SNP Government have put up another wall of silence.
“At a time when the NHS and Scottish Ambulance Service are at breaking point, Nicola Sturgeon and her ministers have gone into hiding.
“Scotland is in a crisis due to this inadequate SNP Government who only want to speak about one thing – independence.
“People are needlessly dying because of the SNP’s failings.”
A government spokeswoman said ministers and clinicians spoke to the media “almost every day last week”.
She added: “The health secretary will set out the latest position to Parliament on Tuesday.”
Documents obtained by the Scottish Liberal Democrats reveal ambulance waiting times will “worsen across the country”, if the status quo is maintained.
The internal Scottish Ambulance Service analysis estimates that by next year, only 59% of “immediately life-threatening patients would be responded to within eight miles against the target of 75%”.
Scottish Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “The stories of excruciating and sometimes fatal waits should haunt every member of this Scottish Government.”
The Sunday Post reported that the Scottish Government has been urged to use Army soldiers to run field hospitals to help solve the ongoing ambulance crisis.
A spokeswoman for the ambulance service said: “Our demand and capacity review looked at current versus predicted demand and how many staff and vehicles we’d need.
“Four options were submitted to the Scottish Government and we are pleased that they agreed to option four, our preferred option.
“It is being actioned on a phased basis with the aim of increasing resources by 458 frontline staff, and we have welcomed £20 million investment from the Scottish Government for the first two years of this programme.”