My husband died in my arms waiting hours for ambulance - Starmer's new NHS plan won't work

Families who have lost loved ones after NHS delays have slammed Keir Starmer's 10-year plan for the service, claiming it is missing crucial measures to improve patient care. Iqbal Rahman, 58, a configuration manager from London, died in his wife’s arms from a cardiac arrest on Christmas Eve in 2022. Samina Rahman, 61, a speech and language therapist from Birmingham, lost her husband while they waited for an ambulance during a family break in a bed and breakfast in Hereford over the festive period.

“For a few days before our trip away, he’d been saying that he hadn’t been feeling well,” Mrs Rahman said. “He was feeling a bit weak and not himself.

“All of a sudden, he said, ‘I really feel worse. My body’s aching’. There was a sofa in the kitchen, he lay down there… He looked so unwell and pale.”

Mrs Rahman, who raised two daughters and two sons with her husband, recalled that it was first suspected that Iqbal was having a diabetic episode, so the ambulance call handler suggested giving him some jam.

He then developed shoulder pain and was growing more breathless. Mrs Rahman recalled: “I said, ‘I don’t think it’s the diabetes; I think it’s more than that. I don’t think we should be waiting a couple of hours’.”

The responder said the wait for an ambulance at this time was six to eight hours.

“It wasn’t that long after, about 15 maybe 20 minutes, and he got worse,” Samina remembered. “His eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he kind of collapsed onto the sofa. So we called the ambulance again, and again we were told we’ve got to wait a few hours.”

“He’s obviously got something heart related, a heart attack going on [I said over the phone],” she explained. “I’m pleading with them.”

Mrs Rahman was told again that help was coming but it would take a few hours. “We couldn’t lift him,” she said. “By the third call, my daughter’s running around. She’s gone outside to find someone who can help get him into a car and get to a hospital somewhere, anywhere.”

Samina, who was watching her husband's “really laboured breathing”, told the call handler: “I think he’s dying. We need help now.”

Weeping, she then described Iqbal’s final moments. Samina said: “He called my name, he held my hand, and rolled into my side and started reciting some prayers, and the next thing, he was gone. The ambulance still hadn’t come.”

While many will welcome any bid to improve the NHS, Mrs Rahman thinks Labour's latest plan is still missing crucially needed improvements.

She said: “There are thousands of people like me, who live every day with the loss of a loved one because of 15 years of government underfunding, disorganisation and privatisation that left the NHS in a perilous state, with staff rarely able to give their patients the care they need.

“[Wes] Streeting and [Keir] Starmer’s 10-year plan is full of big promises but without a significant increase in funding, no commitment to increase the number of hospital beds, and no serious plan to increase the NHS workforce these promises seem like fantasy."

Campaigners from Just Treatment placed a bench in memory of loved ones who had passed away amid delays in front of Labour’s HQ in Southwark on Friday.

Samina added: “This bench is not just a memorial to those who died avoidable deaths - it is a warning to the government. We will not let other families suffer the same fate as us.

"If you care about patient lives you need to tax wealth, increase NHS funding, and put a stop to corporations ripping off our health service.”

Research by UNISON published in April concluded that 68% of ambulance workers reported patients’ health deteriorating during long waits and 5% said people have died in their care because of long delays in being admitted to hospital wards.

The Express has approached the Government for comment.

This week, Sir Keir Starmer said the “future already looks better for the NHS”, as he published the Government's plan to improve the service.

It sets out a series of measures to bring care much closer to people’s homes, thereby reducing the reliance on hospitals and A&E.

The proposals would mean fewer staff working in the NHS than previous projections said were needed, with far more providing care closer to home and fewer working in hospitals.

Key reforms include a greatly enhanced NHS app to give patients more control over their care and more data at their fingertips, new neighbourhood health centres open six days a week and at least 12 hours a day, and new laws on food and alcohol to prevent ill health.

The Prime Minister said: “It’s all down to the foundation we laid this year, all down to the path of renewal that we chose, the decisions made by the Chancellor, by Rachel Reeves, which mean we can invest record amounts in the NHS.”

He added: “I’m not going to stand here and say everything is perfect now, we have a lot more work to do and we will do it.

“But let’s be under no illusions: because of the fair choices we made, the tough Labour decisions we made, the future already looks better for our NHS.

“And that is the story of this Government in a nutshell.”