A footballer was left waiting ten hours for an ambulance after dislocating his knee during a football match.
Charlie Fox from Queen’s Park football club in Glasgow had been playing in the team’s match against Partick Thistle on Saturday when the injury occured.
Play was stopped during the match for around ten minutes while Fox was stretchered off the pitch.
Emergency services were called to take the 26-year-old to hospital, however an ambulance didn’t arrive until 1am – around ten hours after the incident took place.
On Thursday, the First Minister apologised for the length of time the defender waited for an ambulance, describing the wait as “completely unacceptable”.
‘Ambulance crisis’
It comes after another Scottish footballer was left waiting for five hours for an ambulance in September after suffering a double leg break.
Brooke Paterson, 19, was playing centre-back for Linlithgow Rose Ladies FC against Cumbernauld United when a tackle went wrong.
Despite an ambulance being called multiple times, it took five hours for one to arrive, leaving the 19-year-old lying “in agony” on the pitch, covered with jackets to keep her warm.
Her mother, Charlene, said all she could do was “pray the ambulance would show up” for her daughter.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar raised both incidents with John Swinney at First Minister’s Questions on Thursday, accusing the SNP Government of overseeing an “ambulance crisis”.
“John Swinney and the SNP are failing our NHS and failing the people of Scotland,” Sarwar said.
“On his watch, we have an ambulance crisis putting lives in danger.”
The Labour leader said ambulance response times for life threatening cases have plummeted, with ambulances reaching 83% of life threatening cases within ten minutes ten years ago. That number has now fallen to just 61%.
In response Swinney said there was “an error made in the classification” of Brooke Paterson’s case.
“It is regrettable and I have apologised in writing,” Swinney said.
“In relation to Charlie Fox, the length of time appears to me to be completely unacceptable that he was left to wait.
“The Scottish Ambulance service is investigating the circumstances behind the incident, and I apologise for the length of time he experienced waiting for an ambulance.
Swinney added: “I would say our public services continue to operate under enormous pressure, but they also deliver fantastic service to members of the public in most cases – not in all cases, and where they don’t deliver for all cases, they can expect the First Minister to address those issues and apologise profusely.”
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