Tragedy struck in Nottinghamshire last year when a mother and daughter died despite reaching out for help. In May, 47-year-old Alphonsine Djiako Leuga and her 18-year-old daughter Loraine were found at home. Alphonsine had called 999 for an ambulance in February, but it never came.
Loraine, who had Down syndrome and relied entirely on her mother, survived alone for weeks until her emergency device ran out of charge just before her eighteenth birthday. Alphonsine had sickle cell anaemia, and Loraine’s death was linked to pneumonia, with no signs of hunger or dehydration.
The East Midlands Ambulance Service admitted errors. Their chief of patient safety, Susan Jevons, said the call had been wrongly marked as “abandoned,” so help never arrived, calling it a failure that “should never have happened.”
