Chairwoman of the Goodooga Health Council Loreena Moss said locals were informed staff from the Greater Western Area Health Service (GWAHS) would no longer be available to provide the service.

The health service manager “basically told us that staff of the health service would not be driving the ambulance, which means effectively there is no ambulance,” Ms Moss said.

This comes after the community was told last year that it would have to form a volunteer service if it wanted to keep the town’s ambulance when GWAHS decided to shift the focus of its local health service from acute care to a primary health care model.

In July last year, GWAHS’ senior manager for Aboriginal health, Paul Elbourne said evidence from the past few years showed the ambulance was under utilised.

“We have a $200, 000 unit sitting in Goodooga that is not necessarily being used to its full potential and according to the NSW Ambulance Service, for that reason it is unsustainable,” he said.

A meeting between the Brewarrina Shire Council, health care providers and the Member for Barwon, Kevin Humphries, was held on May 25 to consider the

GWAHS’ proposal to change the ambulance service in Goodooga to a volunteer system and cut the nurses’ hours.

Mr Humphries said the residents of Goodooga were entitled just like everybody else to make sure they got adequate health service.

“They need access to health services on a daily basis and I think they are entitled to an on-call service.”

Mr Humphries said that the issue of transportation was quite critical.

“To go straight from a supported service to rely totally on a volunteer service, I think, is too big a jump.”

Ms Moss said locals had promised to continue the fight to save their health services.

“We were gutted at that meeting when we were told this and so was our health service manager,”she said.

“She had put her face out there saying ‘no, that’s not going to happen, we are going to keep emergency here’ and that sort of stuff.

“Now this long down the track she is told it’s still in jeopardy.

“We were just gobsmacked because there had been an arrangement whereby GWAHS and Ambulance NSW were going to wait until the community was able to provide an alternative.”

A spokeswoman for GWAHS said that an ambulance based at Lightning Ridge would be able to transfer patients and that doctors in Goodooga would not attend emergencies because they were not first responders.