A 73 year old woman with an advanced stage of cancer, suffering with breathing difficulties, waited 7 hours for an ambulance last week.
The woman is a cancer patient at an advanced stage of the disease, which makes it impossible for her to walk or even sit.
Natália Teixeira Marques' daughter Sara said “around 6pm I called 112 on Monday. After an hour or so, they still hadn't come, I called again, they said they had very few ambulances and would come as soon as possible. They showed up half an hour after that second call. ”
Arriving at Faro hospital, it became apparent that the reason for the delay was due to the lack of stretchers available for patients in the hospital, meaning patients had to remain on the ambulance stretchers, making them unable to leave.
“The firefighters were with us for about three hours, until the hospital had a stretcher to move my mother on to, and they could leave”, Sara says.
Other patients went through the same thing, “it also happened to a number of others who were from Tavira, Olhão and other places. I saw firefighters completely 'frustrated' because they wanted to leave and couldn't. Those who were with us even told me: 'I have three calls and I can't get out of here'”.
The mother was hospitalised and discharged the next day, needing an ambulance to transport her home - this time it was seven hours of waiting.
At 16:30 the doctor who discharged her called the ambulance. The daughter says that “we were waiting, and we were waiting, and we were waiting… I called the hospital and they said that from 18:00 onwards, the ambulance service will transfer to Portimão. And that they were going to pass my call to the transport nucleus.”
The daughter tried for an hour to speak with the transportation nucleus, which did not respond. “They ended up telling me that it's common practice for the people in the transport hub not to answer the phone. They don't even respond internally. And that there is nothing to do. Just wait."
Elderly patient Natália didn't get home until 23:30, about seven hours after she was discharged.
The Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Algarve (CHUA) was contacted and said that “it does not have ambulances” and that “ambulances for transporting patients are the responsibility of private entities or firefighters and their availability is not managed by the hospital, but by the aforementioned entities”.
The president of the Intermunicipal Community of the Algarve (AMAL), António Pina, in statements claimed to be unaware of the specific case of this cancer patient and recalled that this is an issue related to hospital administration that is not the competence of a mayor.
