A two-year-old girl died from a cardiac arrest after an overrun ambulance service sent firemen instead of trained medics to save her.
Little Yuna Feeley, from Massachusetts, was suffering from a respiratory illness when she suddenly went limp and stopped breathing on the morning of January 26.
Her mother, Andrea Feeley, frantically called 911 but the local ambulance service sent a fire crew instead.
When firemen arrived it was immediately clear Yuna needed advanced life support that trained paramedics could provide, so they radioed in for an ambulance.
But Action Ambulance Service, the private company that provides ambulance service to Winthrop, Greater Boston, did not have enough ambulance available to respond to the call.
After around 15 minutes, well above the eight-minute benchmark for ambulances to respond to cardiac arrests, there was still no ambulance in sight.
In a bid to rescue Yuna, one of the firefighters drove her to Massachusetts General Hospital in his car with two colleagues delivering CPR but it was too late and she was pronounced dead on arrival.
The incident comes amid a chronic shortage of ambulance operators and EMS workers in the Boston area, which experts say is putting public safety at risk.
An autopsy report confirmed Yuna’s official cause of death as a rare but severe lung infection called ‘necrotizing pneumonia’ which proved fatal on top of her respiratory virus
A spokesperson for Action Ambulance told DailyMail.com: ‘Our hearts go out to Yuna Feeley’s family. This was a devastating incident for everyone involved, and our crews did everything possible to help that day.
‘The EMS system in Massachusetts and across the country is stressed due to an increase in calls, staffing challenges and backlogs in our hospital emergency rooms.
‘These are challenges we are working to overcome every day, and we look forward to working with our partners and local and state governments on meaningful solutions.’
An autopsy report confirmed Yuna’s official cause of death as a rare but severe lung infection called ‘necrotizing pneumonia’ which proved fatal on top of her respiratory virus.
The girl deserved ‘an ambulance and paramedics who could have possibly done more,’ her mom told NBC10 Boston.
An investigation launched by Boston Globe attributes the child’s death in part to a severe shortage of ambulances in the Boston area, with overworked paramedics adding to the problem.
It explains: ‘There is no central or regionalized system to track the location of ambulances in real time, and no one evaluating whether the number of ambulances on the road is sufficient.
‘For ambulances that are in operation, chronic staffing shortages mean sometimes badly needed ambulances that are supposed to be in the field stay parked in garages, unused.
‘And when the ambulances are staffed, in some cases the same overworked EMTs and paramedics are sent out over and over again during long shifts that can result in serious mistakes.’
Many Massachusetts ambulance workers revealed that they regularly worked double and triple shifts.
During the investigation – which involved interviewing more than 50 industry experts, current and former EMTs paramedics, and others – The Globe identified three other deaths in the state, including two in Winthrop, that occurred in the run up to Yuna’s death.
In these cases, the paramedics were subsequently investigated by the state for negligence.
In Yuna’s case, firefighters arrived at the scene seven minutes after the 911 call was made and she arrived at the hospital 23 minutes later.
Andrea Feeley frantically put in call to 911 when her daughter Yuna went into cardiac arrest one morning in January. However, no ambulance arrived and the tot later died in hospital
As her daughter fought for her life, Ms Feeley just remembers repeating ‘where are they? where are they?’ before realizing that the ambulance service wasn’t going to come in time.
She said everything seemed fine and she had just been encouraging Yuna to take a drink of Pedialyte to help her keep hydrated while dealing with a mild fever she’d had for a couple of days.
However, as Yuna was in her mother’s arms she suddenly went limp and stopped breathing.
Ms Feeley’s son called 911 and within minutes local firefighters arrived at the family home in Winthrop to administer CPR on Yuna.
When Ms Feeley’s son contacted 911, the call went through to Action Ambulance Service, a private company that provides ambulance services to Winthrop.
Both of the firm’s ambulances were responding to other calls.
In this scenario, the community relies on help through neighboring towns but their ambulance services were similarly stretched.
In a bid to rescue Yuna, one of the firefighters drove her to Massachusetts General Hospital in his car but it was too late and she was pronounced dead on arrival
‘The Winthrop & surrounding 911 systems were taxed, and unfortunately there was a poor patient outcome,’ an Action Ambulance executive later wrote.
In a statement submitted to Department of Public Health during its own investigation, the executive added that Action Ambulance followed ‘all appropriate policies and procedures.’
There were no repercussions from the investigation and it was signed off without comment by the Department of Public Health.
Experts told the Globe that ‘had paramedics been with the child, they could have given her more advanced emergency care’ and ‘they might have applied drugs such as epinephrine or used more advanced defibrillators with a better chance to shock her heart back into action.’
It was also suggested the IV fluids could have been used to ‘ensure her blood continued to reach her vital organs and supply them with enough nutrients and oxygen to keep them from failing’.
Winthrop’s fire chief also says the situation could have been preventable.
He mused: ‘Maybe having an ambulance wouldn’t have made a difference, but it would’ve given her a better shot.
‘We’re all parents. Some of us are grandparents. It’s devastating. It’s not supposed to happen. It’s a horrible, horrible thing.’
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .