THE nightmare of having to wait too long for an ambulance for his ill child has prompted councillor Glenn Taylor to come forward to champion the cause for more paramedics in Orange.
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“I know people always say it seems longer than you think when you’re waiting for an ambulance, but it was half an hour and that could mean life and death, and I don’t want to see any other family go through that,” Cr Taylor said.
“When the ambulance hadn’t come I rang back to triple-0 and they told me it was out of town and would get there as fast as possible.”
Cr Taylor is full of praise for the paramedics who rushed his daughter to hospital, and the staff at Orange hospital who treated her before she was flown to Westmead Children’s Hospital.
“From the paramedics to the doctors and nurses, they were all magnificent and I can’t speak highly enough of them,” he said.
“My complaint lies with the lack of resources, which is ridiculous when you consider Orange is a centre for medical excellence in every other way.”
Cr Taylor said Orange residents should not be prepared to accept the response from the Ambulance Service of NSW that one ambulance to cover the Orange area at night, with a second ambulance on call, is good enough.
“I am putting forward a proposal for the next council meeting that the city get behind this and, with the support of council, we get petitions out to as many businesses in Orange as possible,” he said.
“We are a city of 40,000 people, and to think we have had virtually no increase in paramedics in Orange in 20 years while our population has been growing just simply isn’t good enough.”
Council Taylor concedes it is both the previous Labor government and the current Coalition that has been sitting on its hands.
“But I want to put politics aside in this and I now feel because I represent the people of Orange it is my role to go in and fight for our paramedics, because they are exhausted with their workload,” he said.
Councillor Taylor said his daughter’s health had deteriorated throughout the day prior to her being rushed to hospital last month and being diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
When Cr Taylor called the ambulance at 7.10pm the shift arrangements for Orange station involved one ambulance on duty during the night with a second one on call involving paramedics who had already worked a full day shift.
When contacted by the Central Western Daily yesterday the Ambulance Service of NSW said it would investigate the details surrounding the logging of the call and provide a response today.