A negligent ambulance crew in the United Kingdom dropped an 89-year-old woman at a stranger’s home after she was discharged from the hospital, the local media reported. Elizabeth Mahoney had been battling Covid-19 at the County Hospital in Pontypool, South Wales, for 10 weeks and got discharged after defeating the disease, but she could not trounce the human laxity shown by the ambulance service.
Her family members had waited for days for her to arrive home and they began to get concerned when she did not show up at the scheduled time, Wales Online reported. A frantic few hours later, it emerged that the Welsh Ambulance Service had taken her to an address in Newport — more than eight miles away — and left her in the bed of a total stranger.
Mahoney’s son Brian said disappointingly that the whole thing was a “catalogue of errors from start to finish”. He told the news outlet that the hospital called around 1 pm local time on March 12 to inform the family that Mahoney was on her way home. But even an hour later, she did not arrive. Brian then called up the hospital and was told that there had been “a bit of a problem”. Mahoney had suffered a stroke “not so long back”, he said.
So, the first thought that came to the family’s mind was something bad had happened to her. Nearly 3 hours later, Brian said he received another call from the hospital and was told that his mother had been taken to a house in Newport, “but the details weren’t really clear”.
The ambulance service said it has apologised to the family. But Brian told the Mirror that he was yet to receive an official explanation for the negligence by the staff. The woman was then readmitted to the hospital for a check-up as she had been to a place the family was not aware of and because she had just recovered from Covid-19, Brian said.
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