The shameful treatment of Dr Huhana Hickey highlights an ambulance service not fit to keep
Woman wheeled herself to hospital when ambulance couldn’t take her wheelchair
A disabled woman with Covid-19 symptoms and a multiple sclerosis flare-up says she waited 12 hours for an ambulance and when it finally arrived, paramedics couldn’t take her to hospital. So she wheeled herself there.
Dr Huhana Hickey (Ngāti Tāhinga, Whakatōhea), who is a highly regarded disability advocate and sits on a number of regional and national health boards, was admitted to Middlemore Hospital after arrival, and also tested positive for Covid-19.
When she was discharged five days later, Hickey had to wheel herself home because there weren’t any shuttles or taxis available to accommodate her wheelchair.
She said the experience left her feeling “bloody angry”.
I have had the privilege of interviewing Dr Huhana Hickey when I hosted Waatea 5th Estate on Sky TV, she is someone I always listen to and as far as I am concerned is one of the leading voices for the disabled community in NZ.
I have an enormous respect for her intellect, her insight and her role as a voice for a community who get treated poorly by society.
That she had to go through such a humiliating experience by the Ambulance service who were not only late but when they did turn up at midnight couldn’t transport her in her wheelchair.
I have never understood why the Christ our Ambulance service isn’t publicly owned, that would force them to have to consider all members of the community so there aren’t humiliating experiences like this.
The Government must consider nationalising the Ambulance service, dramatically upgrading it and dump the user pays charges.
This is a disgraceful humiliation of a disability advocate who deserves so much better than this treatment. The manner in which the disability community are always left behind in decision making is shameful! News that budget cuts to State Housing will see disability access dumped is an outrageous example of this terrible treatment of the disability community…
The Greens want the Government to rule out cutting back on a programme that makes state houses accessible for people with disabilities in a bid to save money.
A leaked paper from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development warned that state housing agency Kāinga Ora’s borrowing was becoming unsustainable.
The paper suggested suspending programmes to improve heating and removing “accessibility improvements” from Kāinga Ora’s retrofit programme as ways of saving money, as well as leaving remote locations which were high cost.
Green Party spokeswoman for disabled people Jan Logie urged Housing Minister Megan Woods to rule out accepting that recommendation.
…disability can randomly strike us at any time, that we treat people who have been dealt a vulnerable hand in life with such contempt is an indictment on us as a society.
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The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that this piece is an unnecessary and uncalled for beat up on the ambulance service. Usual conveyance to a hospital for patients using an ambulance is by stretcher (in the back of the ambulance). As stated previously identified limited space in ambulances means that wheel chairs are unnecessary. Images of Dr Hickey indicate hers is a powered chair, which a) don’t fold up and b) given the electrification represent and unnecessary safety risk in close proximity to oxygen supplies. Dr Hickey isn’t being singled out….these restrictions/regulations apply to everyone. Want to take your powered wheelchair to hospital (?), get a taxi van with a ramp.
That’s not a service. Those are shit cunts. Shit for brains. Unbelievable!
While I would be the last person to stand up for landlords, there’s an irony to the fact that government is now considering missing its 2023 guideline for ‘healthy homes’* in state housing, which the private sector was supposed to comply with years ago.
A convenient excuse to give a National government to sell off ‘unhealthy’ social housing stock? Who knows.
* which continues to be nonsense when people can’t afford to run heating because of NATO’s war in Ukraine
I feel sorry for this lady but with her knowledge of the system surely she would have been aware that she could not have travelled in the ambulance in her wheelchair. If the system was better the ambulance should be fully funded and built to take wheelchairs. The navy does not need to turn to Lions and Rotorary clubs for funds for a new ship so why do we require ambulances to be only 75 percent funded
Me and my whanau have had amazing service from the ambulance service. My brother in law had to get out of his wheelchair which appeared too wide for ambulance. There must be more issues to the story.
They have not been turning up for years and when they do the response time is not fantastic. Exceptional is a quick response. This I know. The system is deliberately under manned to live within its budget. The staff get that 1000 yard stare like any under resourced public service of too few doing too much.
The problem is not new, it has just got worse, like all things health related in this country.
Terrible! But I am puzzled that an ambulance can’t take a wheel chair. Anyone know about these things?
I should imagine in the confined space of the back of an ambulance a wheelchair is not allowed and would be left for friends/relatives to bring. The patient being the priority of course.
That St John still operates on the basis of cake stalls and begging for 1/4 of its funding is an utter mockery.
Our ministers would do well to find out what happens when one requires one only to find it never arrives. And yes, Andrew Little has written off any changes to the ambulance service because as always, he knows better. Tool!
I feel very sorry for that woman. Totally unacceptable!