A 69-year-old male was found dead at his home in the early hours of Sunday morning, after waiting four hours for an ambulance to arrive.

The Victorian Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill said due to high levels of sick leave there was a shortage of staff across Victoria over the weekend.

The union secretary stated they were down 50 ambulance crews and instead of the usual 120 ambulances on the Saturday night shift there were only 90. Hill said that it had been a long time since crew numbers had dropped this much at once.

“It has been years since we’ve seen this sheer volume of crews dropped in one night,” he said.

“The members rarely get breaks, almost never finish on time, and they are exhausted and burnt out. So, this is the reality we are facing.”

One of the 69-year-old male’s neighbours called an ambulance at 2am and was told it would be a 40–60 minute wait for the ambulance.

Neighbours who did not have access to the property heard the elderly man yelling for up to two hours after the first call was made for an ambulance. Due to this, Hill believes that if an ambulance arrived faster the man may have been saved, although he stressed he did not know the patient’s condition.

“Just based on that, it does sound like a faster response may have led to a different outcome, but there’s no guarantee,” he said.

Photo: Ambulance by Ed Dunens is available HERE and is used under a Creative Commons Licence. This image has not been modified.