Another family is today calling on Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh to address the slow response of the country’s ambulance service.
Kevin Pinchilia, 29, made the call yesterday after his wife of eight years, Lydia Mohammed-Pinchilia, also 29, died after waiting for over half-an-hour for an ambulance to arrive to take her for urgent medical attention.
Ambulance officials, he said, warned him not to move his wife when he said he feared she was in trouble. He complied with the medical advice but the ambulance never came and he still had to take her to the health facility in his vehicle as he had initially proposed to.
Speaking to the T&T Guardian at the Couva Health Facility around 6 pm yesterday, moments after his wife had died, a distraught Pinchilia said around 3 pm he had just returned to his home at Post Office Street, Balmain, Couva, when Lydia complained of feeling unwell.
“As I got home she said she wanted to go to the doctor, any doctor. We were leaving home when she collapsed,” he recalled.
He said he called the local ambulance service and was told an ambulance would be at his home shortly.
“We live three minutes from here (Couva Health Facility) and they said not to move her, that the ambulance would come,” he said.
After waiting an unbearable 30 minutes, he said he was told the ambulance was not coming from the Couva Health Facility. He said he eventually took her to the hospital himself.
What made Pinchilia even more distraught was the presence of three ambulances parked at the facility when he arrived there.
“I begged them on the phone for me to move her, they kept saying ‘no don’t move her.’ And when I realised she was not responding at all I put her in the car and we came here. There were three ambulances parked up here.”
An autopsy is expected to be done this morning at the San Fernando Mortuary to determine the cause of death.
Chief executive officer of Global Medical Response T&T, Paul Anderson, the company contracted to provide ambulance services in this country, said all of its ambulances were tied up at the time of the call.
Anderson said he was not disputing the time of the call or the lack of response.
“Unfortunately as is a very common occurrence all of our ambulances that would be in the area were tied up... being delayed at hospitals... dropping off patients that were there before,” Anderson said.