Mississippi woman's death from asthma attack illustrates deadly gaps in rural emergency services - Entrepreneur Generations

Shyteria Shoemaker (Photo
provided to Clarion-Ledger)

A story out of Mississippi shows how the gaps in rural emergency services, and possibly police mistakes, can be fatal in situations where minutes count. Shyteria Shoemaker, a 23-year-old pregnant woman with a toddler, died on Jan. 27 from an apparent asthma attack after she couldn't get help quickly enough in Chickasaw County, pop. 17,392, Floyd Ingram reports for the Chickasaw Journal.

Part of the problem was the lack of ambulance services. Two ambulances operate in Chickasaw County at all times, one in Houston and one in Okolona, but the Houston ambulance driver had a family emergency and left duty a little more than an hour before Shoemaker's asthma attack, Giacomo Bologna reports for the Clarion Ledger in Jackson. That left only one ambulance in the county, and it was picking up another patient at the time of Shoemaker's attack. The other big problem: Trace Regional Hospital in Houston had closed its emergency room in 2014, citing financial problems because of patients who couldn't pay for care.

Chickasaw County and Houston
(Wikipedia map)

According to timelines by the Chickasaw Journal and the Clarion Ledger, a cousin called 911 in Chickasaw County at 1:18 a.m. saying Shoemaker was having difficulty breathing. Dispatchers sent out an ambulance from Okolona, near Shoemaker's home in Houston. At 1:25 a second 911 call alerted dispatchers that they were headed to Trace Regional Hospital. Dispatchers told them there was no emergency room there and told them to go to the Houston Fire Department.

At 1:26 Shoemaker arrived at the fire department. Firefighters there decided Shoemaker needed to go to the emergency room at Memorial Baptist Hospital in Calhoun City, 25 minutes away, but Shoemaker's cousins worried the firefighters weren't responding quickly enough, and drove a block to downtown to flag down a police officer. Shoemaker was unconscious at that point, but a cousin, who is black, said police believed they were a threat and ordered them to the ground, further delaying the response. Dispatchers rerouted the ambulance downtown, which took Shoemaker to the hospital. But she was pronounced dead at 2:38 a.m.

"They tried to resuscitate here for about 20 to 30 minutes, but never got her to come around," Calhoun County Coroner Jerry Wayne Fleming told Ingram.

"Last fall the community seemed to be seeking ways to revive the emergency room or some kind of after hours clinic with several people writing a series of letters to the Chickasaw Journal about the issue," Ingram reports. "Nothing materialized."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2WiVDBV Mississippi woman's death from asthma attack illustrates deadly gaps in rural emergency services - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet