In July, Jackie Hulbert, 78, fell at home but had to wait 11 hours on the ground for an ambulance to arrive. At his side in this “undignified” moment, his son Mathew today warns of the scale of the crisis in Britain’s healthcare system.
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Jackie died of sepsis in hospital two days later and while no direct link to the long hours on land is made, Mathew has since testified, publicly and free of charge, to the National Health Service, the NHS.
When AFP meets Mathew Hulbert in Barwell, a small town 100 miles north of London, where he works at a local club, this cheerful 42-year-old man has told his story many times, but his face instantly darkens at the memory of the ordeal that his mother experienced.
In the early morning of July 10, he was awakened at 4:30 am by a city official. Her mother, who had fallen during the night, activated the emergency call installed at her home.
A friend drove him home from where they called an ambulance at 5:01 am. “Eleven hours later, at 4:00 p.m., a nurse finally came. She herself called an ambulance, which arrived half an hour later. My mother was taken to the hospital where it was found that she had an infection that turned into sepsis and she died two days later,” breathes Mathew.
During this endless wait, he stays with his mother, who cannot be moved because she is suffering from ribs, and her son fears aggravating his wounds.
He gives her food and drink and constantly calls 999 to know when an ambulance can come.
“It was totally unworthy” and “I felt very isolated because you want to help your parents, you don’t want to see them suffer (…) and there wasn’t much I could do,” he says.
Because her mother is not in a life-threatening emergency, she is not considered a priority by emergency services, which are already overwhelmed.
Stories like this regularly make headlines in Britain, symptoms of the deep crisis facing the NHS, which is on the brink of collapse due to austerity measures that began in 2010 and the fallout from the Covid pandemic.
Last December, Category 2 patients, which include heart attacks, waited an average of 90 minutes for an ambulance.
Due to a lack of support capacity when leaving the hospital, many patients stay there longer than necessary, blocking beds for new patients.
In England, almost one in five ambulances takes more than 30 minutes to the hospital door to drop off a patient.
That is exactly what happened to Jackie, according to explanations given to Mathew by the East Midlands Regional Ambulance Service.
Today, “we continue to receive a sustained number of calls relating to serious or vital emergencies” involving the “prioritization” of interventions, explained AFP Charlotte Walker, its Leicestershire operations manager.
“Unacceptable”
“Ever since what happened to my mom, I see it on social media every day,” says Mathew. “Right now people are in desperate situations and waiting for hours for an ambulance… and that’s just not acceptable.”
Nurses and paramedics walked away several times to protest these dysfunctions and demand better salaries. They will repeat it on February 6th.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has made this dossier his priority, unveiled an emergency relief plan and announced the NHS would buy 800 extra ambulances and open 5,000 new hospital beds.
Mathew, unwilling to allow himself to think that his mother would still be alive if she were taken care of more quickly, is urging the political class to address the issue.
“We need bipartisan discussions to solve the problem,” he said. “It’s about real people’s lives. People are suffering, families are being destroyed by what is happening,” he pleads again.