THE shocking case of the 96-year-old woman who was left waiting 19 hours for an ambulance is yet more proof of a crisis in our ambulance service.

While we realise in this case that it was not a 999 call and therefore not deemed an emergency, Marjorie Weale’s GP obviously thought her condition serious enough for her to need an ambulance to go to hospital for checks.

Her hip was causing her so much pain she could not get out of bed and was unable to stand up to get to the toilet.

Her family even cancelled her carers, thinking that Mrs Weale would soon be admitted to hospital.

This length of wait is clearly unacceptable, as are the others that we have reported on recently.

While we are not blaming the staff on the ground, clearly the South Wales Ambulance Service management need to get a grip of the problem before lives are lost as a result of delays.

We should also point out that we were not aware that this problem existed when it was the Gwent Ambulance Service.

It would not be unfair of us to point out that centralisation simply hasn’t worked.