A teenager in the UK has been found dead after ambulance crews failed to respond to a 999 call as his devastated family said they were “broken” and demanded answers.
Bradley Holder, 19, was found dead at a property in Stoke-on-Trent in England on Monday.
He had called for help at 6:12 pm the night before, but the West Midlands Ambulance Service was too busy to respond, reports Stoke-on-Trent Live.
A second call was made to 999, from someone in the house, at 9:04 am. Monday, minutes later, Brad was announced dead at the scene.
Staffordshire Police said the teenager’s death was being treated as “unexplained”.
The Ambulance Service says the NHS is ‘working incredibly hard to respond more rapidly and save more lives’, reports The Mirror.
An ambulance service spokesman said: “At the time of the original call – at 6.12pm on Sunday – the trust was experiencing long handover delays at hospitals and had 78 other calls of the same category awaiting dispatch in the county. Unfortunately, this meant that we were not able to dispatch an ambulance to Mr Holder at the time. A further call – at 9.04am on Monday – was triaged as Category 1 with the first ambulance arriving six minutes later. In total, two ambulances and a paramedic officer attended the scene. On arrival they discovered Mr Holder. Unfortunately, he was confirmed dead at the scene. The ambulance service relies on each part of the health and social care system working together so that our ambulances can get to patients in the community quickly. Sadly, the pressures we are seeing in health and social care lead to long hospital handover delays with our crews left caring for patients that need admitting to hospital rather than responding to the next call. The result is that our crews are delayed reaching patients. We are working incredibly hard with all of our NHS and social care partners to prevent these delays, looking at new ways to safely hand over patients quickly so that our crews can respond more rapidly and save more lives,” reports The Mirror.
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