AN ambulance trust has apologised after an elderly Bournemouth woman was left waiting in agony for hours for an ambulance to take her to hospital.

Sarban Bibi's ordeal began on Friday September 21, when pain from a chronic back problem flared up. Her daughter-in-law rang for an ambulance during the afternoon, but was allegedly given a ticking off by the crew for doing so.

Seventy-two-year-old Mrs Bibi's son Terry Ali said the doctor arrived at 3.30pm. "He sent the ambulance away, administered a morphine injection and told my sister-in-law that if mum was no better by 6pm, she should call the ambulance back."

At 9pm, he decided to call back the ambulance himself because his mother was in so much pain. At 9.45pm, a doctor from the out of hours GP service rang, promising to be there as soon as possible.

At 11pm, the doctor rang again to apologise for the delay. He arrived at 1am and said he would order an ambulance to take Mrs Bibi to hospital, but admitted there were problems finding a bed.

"At this point we were told the ambulance would be there within the hour," said Mr Ali. "At 3.30am my brother phoned to find out where it was. He was told they were busy saving lives and would be there as soon as possible."

An exhausted Mrs Bibi eventually dozed off at 6am after two sleepless nights. The ambulance arrived at 7.05am, but the family sent it away.

A spokeswoman for South Western Ambulance Service explained that the target for responding to such calls was one to six hours.

"The urgent call was sent an ambulance response which fell outside of the target time.

"Due to unusually high demand on the evening in question the target response time proved to be unobtainable," she said.

"The trust would like to sincerely apologise to the patient and their family for any distress that this may have caused and would like to make an assurance that they always seek to respond as quickly as possible to deliver first-class care."