A seriously-ill cancer patient was stranded on the wrong Scottish island following a mix-up by air ambulance staff.
Last night, a senior Western Isles councillor was demanding an investigation into the blunder which led up to an air ambulance crew leaving Archie Boyd, 63, on Benbecula, rather than his intended destination of Barra. They are not even neighbouring islands. South Uist, Eriskay and 40 miles are in between.
There was local speculation that the problem had arisen because the name of the hospital on Benbecula is the Uist and Barra Hospital, which could have contributed to the misunderstanding.
The air ambulance aircraft flew him to Balivanich on Benbecula yesterday morning after he had received a session of radiotherapy treatment in a Glasgow hospital.
Mr Boyd was discharged at 7.30am from the Beatson Cancer Centre at Gartnavel Hospital. The plan was to transfer him to St Brendan's Hospital in Castlebay on his home island of Barra.
According to his family yesterday, Mr Boyd is too weak to move properly and the cancer in his face means he has lost the sight in one eye. It also affected his speech for a period. He has been ill for around six months and has had chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
The only way to get him home to Barra is by air ambulance, but a mistake meant the pilot landed at Benbecula yesterday morning.
But the error was not recognised until Mr Boyd had been taken off the aircraft and it had returned to Glasgow. An ambulance at Balivanich was arranged to take him to the nearby hospital. He finally got to Barra about 5.30pm yesterday.
According to the Scottish Ambulance Service, the high winds that were sweeping the Western Isles prevented a helicopter returning immediately to pick him up to take him south to Barra. So Mr Boyd remained on Benbecula throughout the day. His wife, Bellag, was very distressed.
She said: "It is disgusting. I think this is terrible. The same thing happened last week to another patient. I would not like this to happen to anyone else."
Mrs Boyd said she asked councillor Donald Manford to help sort out to get Mr Boyd to hospital on Barra.
Mr Manford said: "This is not the first time incidents like this have happened with people taken to the wrong place or left stranded. It is not an acceptable way to operate a service."
An Scottish Ambulance Service spokesman admitted an error had been made. "It was our understanding that the patient was to go to the Uist and Barra Hospital in Benbecula."
He said the weather thwarted attempts to return immediately. The ambulance service said it had made every effort with both the Inverness and Glasgow helicopters to get the patient to the Barra hospital as soon as possible.
He later reported that Mr Boyd was safely on Barra.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article