AMBULANCE DELAYS

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 15 June 1933, Page 2

AMBULANCE DELAYS

INJURED MAN’S LONG WAIT

DOCTOR SPEAKS PLAINLY

NAPIER, June 13

As an outcome of strong comments made by Dr. Allen Berry at a meeting of the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board, concerning the manner in which an ambulance was dispatched from Napier to Tarawera to attend a mail seriously injured in a recent motorcar smash on Turangakumu Hill, the board proposes to call a conference with tlie police, Telegraph Department and Hawke’s Bay Automobile Association.

“The facts were,” said Dr. Berry, “that a car went over the second bend on the Turangakumu Hill and lauded down the valley. Two women managed to scramble up on to the road and stopped a passing car, which brought them to Tarawera. When the rescue party arrived where The accident occurred it took four hours to find the driver, a boy who was seriously injured, and when the party arrived at Tarawera he was .so cold that it was 3-1 hours before he was thoroughly warm, despite a blazing lire and hot water bottles. “The postmaster at Tarawera was away for the week-end, so there was no means of communication with Napier, but people who brought in the two women rang the Napier police from Te Poliue. Fortunately a doctor was on holiday at Tarawera, otherwise tlie boy might have perished. “About four o’clock in the morning the Napier Hospital ambulance arrived with two policemen, but without any skilled assistants, drugs, dressings, or splints, although it was known to he going to a serious accident case.” Dr. Berry read a letter from another doctor, who said that there were two stretchers only in the ambulance, with two thin blankets each, no hot water bottles, dressings, splints, or pillows, and lie thought it would have been the duty of the police surgeon to come out. The writer said: “I would hate te imagine the condition of a man with compound fracture of his- femur under similar conditions, which are reprehensible.”

Dr. Berry said that something _ was very wrong, and it seemed to him a terrible thing that two policemen without a doctor should go to as serious an accident as the one under review.

“At present,” ho said, “there is no system at Tarawera, for instance, whereby news of an urgent accident and other cases may be telephoned through to Napier. The sooner we get those rules in trim the better.” The chairman, Mr C. O. Morse, said that he thought it called Tor special inquiry.—“ Dominion” Service.