Tragic wait for ambulance

Sun2Surf: KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 14, 2006): The indifferent and callous response of those responsible for saving lives may have cost an accident victim his life.
At 1.30pm on Wednesday, businesswoman Zara Davies Abdul Rahman came across an accident near the Batu Tiga toll booth on the Elite Highway, Shah Alam. A victim with serious injuries was lying motionless on the road, surrounded by a crowd.
Zara said when she approached him, he was still alive and grabbed her hand.
"I tried to calm him and asked bystanders if an ambulance had been called. I was told it had not," she said at the Parliament lobby today, while accompanied by Opposition Leader Lim Kit Siang.
Zara said she told the driver who knocked into the motorcyclist to call for an ambulance but it took three attempts to 999 before there was a response, and the phone passed to her.
She said she disclosed her contact details and the accident's location, and told 999 that Klang Hospital was the closest hospital.
Subsequently, the hospital's ambulance control centre rang, and she had to repeat the information, stress the urgency of the situation and convince the caller that the hospital was the closest.
She called back at 2.06pm and was told the ambulance had not been sent. She was also asked to repeat the information she had given earlier. Frustrated, she called an aide to the mentri besar for help.
When she called the hospital again at 2.36pm, the ambulance had still not been sent.
Finally, the driver who knocked into the motorcyclist decided to drive him to the hospital with Zara leading the way.
But when they arrived, no one came to their aid, and the victim had died.
Zara said there were about eight ambulances parked at the hospital.

She called on the authorities to:
* locate emergency response centres and ambulances at strategic locations;
* provide proper road signs and directions to hospitals;
* provide special emergency exits at tolls, exit signs and emergency telephone numbers;
* highlight highway names at various locations so road users would be able to identify the location in case of emergency;
* have professionally-trained personnel;
* have emergency stations at hospitals that are staffed at all times; and
* implement a 15-minute response time for SOS calls.
Lim said he would write to the sultan, the Health Minister and the prime minister about the incident.