Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh says citizens will have access to 25 new ambulances by the end of the first quarter of 2016.
This comes after he gave a directive to increase the fleet of ambulances following visits to local hospitals.
Deyalsingh said a shortage of ambulances and an insufficient number of gurneys at the Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments of the nation’s public health institutions were the main reasons for recent delays in ambulance response times.
Last month, a Williamsville man died after spending almost an hour waiting for an ambulance to take him to the San Fernando General Hospital.
This week, Deyalsingh held discussions with the state’s contracted ambulance service provider Global Medical Response of Trinidad and Tobago Limited (GMRTT).
He said the company’s contract with the Government states that there must be a fleet of at least 74 ambulances.
However, the fleet currently includes only 28 to 30 ambulances in daily rotation to serve the entire country, which violates the terms of the contract.
For a number of years, citizens have complained about the lengthy wait time for ambulances to pick up patients in emergency situations.
Complaints have ranged from 45 minutes to hour-long wait times.
Deyalsingh, who met with GMRTT recently, said following discussions, the company had indicated that it had ordered 25 ambulances and would order the remainder later in the year.
Deyalsingh said it wasn’t necessary to place all the blame on GMRTT, however, as the State had also violated the contract with delays in the transfer of patients from the ambulance to the A&E departments of hospitals.
He said this accounted for a long turnover time which affected the time it took for ambulances to reach emergency patients.
“The problem is the transfer from the ambulance to the A&E gurney,” Deyalsingh said.
“The ambulance comes and they have to wait because there aren’t enough trollies to transfer the patients so they can leave.
“We are not adhering to our end of the bargain.”
Deyalsingh said he had instructed the Regional Health Authorities (RHAs) to purchase more trollies for their A&E departments.
“This is what I inherited and this is what I will fix.”
He also said part of the problem was that people were not dialling the correct number for ambulances and were instead calling the RHAs.
“The number for the ambulances is 811, the ambulances attached to the RHAs are for patient transfers.”
He said it was only in some emergency cases that RHA ambulatory services would go to retrieve patients from their homes.