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- 'Hospitals at breaking point'
- Ambulance Victoria ran out of ambulances and had to call in police officers, firefighters, non-emergency patient vehicles and field doctors trained for disasters to help with transporting acutely ill patients to hospital.
- Ambulance Victoria was flooded with more than 1900 calls between 6pm and 11pm – more than six times their usual workload
- Patients blacking out and waking up in hospital
- Unprecedented number of people who fell acutely sick
Two dead after 'thunderstorm asthma' triggers disaster response
The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting two
dead with an unprecedented number of people who fell acutely sick on Monday
evening after a strange phenomenon called “thunderstorm asthma.”
Ambulance Victoria was flooded with more
than 1900 calls between 6pm and 11pm – more than six times their usual workload
– after a storm hit Melbourne shortly before 6pm, prompting a "major
disaster response" from emergency services.
"We were seeing asthma in people who
had not experienced breathing issues before."
Hospitals across Victoria were left
reeling, with depleted supplies of asthma spray Ventolin reported, and
emergency services battled to respond to calls for help when rain and strong
winds churned up pollen, dust and other irritants.
The demand was so great that Ambulance
Victoria ran out of ambulances and had to call in police officers,
firefighters, non-emergency patient vehicles and field doctors trained for
disasters to help with transporting acutely ill patients to hospital. Mr
Stephenson said he even worked through the night, treating patients.
Is “thunderstorm asthma” a new thing?
Thunderstorm asthma was first described in
1992 in Melbourne, following two epidemics in November 1987 and November 1989.
Another event occurred in 2011 and the fourth on Monday night. Epidemics of
thunderstorm asthma have also been described in Wagga Wagga, Naples, Birmingham
and London. Full story
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