Wollondilly Mayor Matt Gould says not having a local hospital is bad enough, but when ambulances can take up to 45 minutes or longer to respond to urgent calls it’s time to beef up resources.
“I’ve heard so many horrifying stories in recent weeks, such as a resident having a heart attack and waiting close to an hour for an ambulance,’’ he says.
“Then there was a person who suffered from a severe allergic reaction after being attacked by wasps and then had to wait 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.
“We desperately need additional crews at both our ambulance stations.
“We have an ambulance station at Picton and an ambulance station at Warragamba.
“However due to shortages across the area, while the crews start at those stations, they are then regularly sent outside our LGA to other areas such as Narellan, Penrith or Bowral and too often do not come back to the Shire at all for the entire shift,’’ Mayor Gould said.
“Waiting for an ambulance to travel these long distances to get to those in need is not appropriate.
“The Wollondilly Shire has no hospital facilities despite our growing population. Residents must travel outside of our LGA for emergency medical treatment and yet ambulance services are taking far too long to get to those patients that can’t take themselves to hospital in an emergency.
“We’re the only Shire in our entire health district that doesn’t have a hospital and now we can’t even get ambulances to come and take people to hospital in a timely manner when they need it.”
Following the adoption of a Mayoral Minute on the issue at the November meeting, Wollondilly Council will write to the Minister for Health calling for an improved ambulance service now.
They are also asking for additional crews for the two local ambulance stations, as well as a clear plan for the future of ambulance services for the growing community.
“Our ambulance services are under pressure to meet challenging response times,’’ Mayor Gould said.
“Our frontline paramedics do an absolutely amazing job with the resources they have, but they are simply being spread too thin and are being asked to do too much with too little.
“The end result of that is our residents are having to wait far too long for ambulance services to arrive.’’
