Letter - Ambulance Services - Fact and Fiction

Ambulance Services - Fact and Fiction

Perhaps notices should be placed in estate agents windows warning that ‘living in Teesdale can seriously damage your health’ or maybe the more strongly worded ‘living in Teesdale can kill’.

The reason for this? The North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) is failing to respond to life threatening cases with performance plummeting to a rock bottom 5.7% across parts of Teesdale, down from 40.9% in the proceeding year. This is against a Government target response of 75%.

Prior to Middleton Ambulance closure the then Durham Dales Primary Care Trust made a commitment that “current ambulance stations would remain in place until changes had been evaluated and proved to be more effective”. They then promptly closed the Middleton ambulance base. There is now independent data, courtesy of the Patient and Pubic Involvement Forum, proving that the new Ambulance Service is much less effective in parts of Teesdale. Consequently the closure decision should be reversed.

If the NEAS would agree to attend a public debate they could attempt to back up their claim, made recently in the Mercury, that ambulance response in the area had significantly improved since the closure of te Middleton station. I have strong reservations about the validity of the statement given that only 42% of ambulance call outs start out from Barnard Castle and all others come from the west (mainly Bishop and Darlington but sometimes further afield). With Barnard Castle ambulance frequently being used out of the area coupled with the removal of the Middleton service there must, logically, be reduced access to ambulance services for all Teesdale residents. Any attempt to claim otherwise smacks of spin and hyperbole.


Karen McManus
Laneside
Middleton in Teesdale