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A three-year-old girl suffering a suspected stroke is claimed to have waited 90 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

Joanne Pugh said her young daughter Kallie Warwick was being violently sick and complaining of terrible pains in her head when she returned from her grandparents’ house on August 3.

After calling her GP out of hours service, Joanne was advised to dial 999 and speak to the control room at the Welsh Ambulance Service .

She said that despite them fearing the toddler may have suffered a stroke, an ambulance crew took an hour-and-a-half to arrive and take her to A&E.

'I was very distressed'

Joanne said: “Kallie was complaining about the right side of her head and she couldn’t touch it. She was also very hot and drowsy.

“When I dialled 999 they kept on asking me if she could raise both her arms over her head and whether she was smiling normally.

“She couldn’t do either of those things while I was on the phone so they sent an ambulance out to us.

“I gave her Calpol to reduce her temperature, but she was still vomiting a lot. At this point I was very distressed.”

Joanne, of Trethomas, Caerphilly , said she was “disgusted” at the length of time ambulance crews took to reach her poorly daughter.

“I waited for an hour and called them again, but they couldn’t give me a timescale on when they’d get here,” she said.

“If I’d known they were going to take that long I would have put her in my car and taken her myself.”

Joanne said an ambulance arrived at their house at about 8.30pm to take Kallie to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport.

Doctors diagnosed the young girl with mastoiditis, a serious bacterial infection that affects a bone behind the ear, and kept her in hospital for three days.

She is now recovering at home after being given antibiotics.

It was classed as an 'Amber' call

The Welsh Ambulance Service is meant to arrive at the scene of life-threatening emergencies , also known as ‘Red’ calls, within eight minutes.

But the service confirmed Kallie’s case was categorised as the less serious ‘Amber’ which isn’t subjected to timed targets.

The Stroke Association says time is of the essence when someone is suspected of having a stroke as two million brain cells are lost every minute.

Darryl Collins, the Welsh Ambulance Service’s head of operations for the Aneurin Bevan Health Board area, said: “We would like to apologise to Miss Pugh and Kallie as this is not the timely response that we aim to provide.

“On the night in question we were experiencing a higher than usual demand on our services, but appreciate that it must have been a very difficult wait for the family.

“We would encourage Miss Pugh to contact us directly so that we can address any concerns that she might have.”