An eight-month-old baby has passed away in a small Interior B.C. town while waiting for an ambulance.
A young family in the North Thompson community of Barriere have been devastated by the loss of their child while waiting for an ambulance to come.
When the child went into cardiac arrest the evening of Thursday (Aug. 25) an ambulance was called. But there was no ambulance available in Barriere, and instead an ambulance had to be dispatched from Kamloops. Unfortunately, the ambulance arrived too late, as the child had passed away.
Would this tragedy have been avoided if an ambulance had been on duty in Barriere that evening?
For a number of years Barriere and area had been under 24-hour ambulance coverage, until last summer when the Province revamped the community’s ambulance coverage to become a 24/7 Alpha Station. The change now requires paramedics with a higher level of training than what had previously been acceptable for the ambulances. But changing the training requirements has now created a problem in trying to fill paramedic positions for ambulances, and the smaller communities are losing out.
“This is a tragic situation for the family,” said Barriere Mayor Ward Stamer, “At this point I have no way of knowing what actually occurred until I talk to the ambulance service. Right now it’s speculation regarding what actually happened.”
