A CAIRNLEA soccer player was forced to wait more than 40 minutes for an ambulance after his leg was broken in two places.
Cairnlea Football Club secretary Yagiz Adal said Paul Procikevic, 31, was in agony after breaking his tibia in two places and was unable to be lifted from the field in the match against Sunbury United at Cairnlea Park on June 29.
“We couldn’t move him,” Adal said
“The ambulance kept telling me the first available would be sent, but we just kept waiting and waiting. He was in incredible pain.”
Ambulance Victoria group manager Tony Elliott said the delay was because an ambulance was diverted to a life-threatening emergency.
“We always send paramedics to the sickest patients first, particularly those with life-threatening conditions,’’ he said. “We dispatched another ambulance, which transported the man to hospital in a stable condition.”
Last September, union figures revealed the average ambulance response time for life-threatening injuries in Sunshine was 12 minutes and 28 seconds, a 1.48 increase on 2009-10 figures.
