Man’s death due to a too-late ambulance upsets readers

SOUTH Africans have reacted with outrage and disgust about the poor response time by the ambulance service in Gauteng.

This follows the story carried by The Star yesterday of a 25year-old electrician, Mlungisi Dlamini, who died after waiting for almost 20 hours for an ambulance to take him to hospital,

The story made many relive their own experiences as they called The Star’s sister newspaper, The Pretoria News, which broke the story, and radio stations.

Gauteng Health MEC Ntombi Mekgwe called Talk Radio 702 and said she would be in meetings yesterday to try to resolve poor emergency response times.

Attempts were made to contact Mekgwe’s office throughout the day and in the evening to find out how the meeting had gone. Spokesman Simon Zwane sent an SMS saying he was still in a meeting.

The City of Tshwane, which had promised to respond to inquiries regarding the incident, failed to give a proper explanation.

Meanwhile, the Dlamini family were making preparations to transport Mlungisi’s body to KwaZulu-Natal.

Mlungisi’s brother, Sandile, said he had received a call from the emergency services people wanting more information on what exactly had happened.

“They said they would get back to me once they were done with the investigations,” said Sandile.

DA Gauteng’s health spokesman, Jack Bloom, said a full investigation must be made into “this tragic case”, adding that there might be many other unre- ported cases in which people had died because of ambulances that arrived too late.

“There must be a management shake-up at all levels to radically improve response times in Gauteng.

“Poor performers must be fired and replaced with competent people,” said Bloom.

He pointed out that the emergency services budget was cut by R90 million this year.