Saving lives, one ambulance emergency at a time
PUCHONG: The ambulance raced around the corner and screeched to a halt in front of the flat.
The medic and driver sped up the stairs to the first-floor unit, where a stroke patient was lying on the floor of her living room after a fall.
Neighbours milled around trying to catch glimpses of the medics administering first aid to the bleeding, barely conscious woman.
Helping her on to the stretcher, they carefully manoeuvred down a flight of stairs and into the ambulance and rushed her off to a local hospital.
They got back to their base in Puchong within minutes only to head out moments later to transfer a patient from one hospital to another.
It may be hectic work, but working for the charity ambulance service run by Community Policing Malaysia has always been fulfilling for these medics and drivers.
The ambulance service is just one of many that social activist Kuan Chee Heng – more affectionately known as Uncle Kentang – has made available for lower-income households, many of whom, he says, choose not to seek medical attention because of prohibitive travel costs.
Established in 2016, the NGO currently employs four medics and five drivers who respond to emergency situations, transfer patients between hospitals and send them for routine medical check-ups and appointments.
Divided into five teams working in two shifts, the service’s eight ambulances respond to around 50 calls each week – most of them in the Serdang and Puchong areas.
The nine-hour shift starts at 8am for most of the staff, with the drivers checking the vehicles’ condition and the medics ensuring that there is adequate stock of medical supplies.
They have a quick breakfast before attending to the day’s calls, some of which include taking dying patients back to their hometowns, sometimes as far away as Kelantan and Terengganu.
While most of the patients are genuinely from modest backgrounds and are thus exempt from the usual minimal service charge, their services are sometimes misused.
Medical assistant Amirul Ikmal Haris Abd Aziz told of an instance when they agreed to send a patient home from a hospital after she claimed to have spent all her money on treatment.
Kuan often lets patients who cannot afford it to ride for free – so the patient hopped on.
“I was shocked when I got to the house. Wow! A bungalow. Wow! A Ferrari… and three Ducatis,” said 28-year-old Haris with a wide grin.
“The patient said it was her brother’s house, but when we asked the brother, he said it was the patient’s house. There have been many times when people have taken advantage of our service, so we try to prevent this whenever we can,” he said.
Haris says that customers who cheat, aggressive patients, and selfish drivers are among his top peeves. The toughest challenge, however, was in keeping his emotions in check.
Haris related a story when he responded to an accident at the Damansara-Puchong expressway and had to bring an injured motorcyclist to the Serdang Hospital. The 20-year-old started losing consciousness soon after, stopped breathing and didn’t have a pulse. Efforts to revive him with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) proved fruitless.
Suddenly, the motorcyclist’s phone started ringing. It was his mother.
“It was very hard for me to tell her about her son,” said Haris. “The mother started crying, and even though my tears were flowing, I had to control myself.
“It’s sad when mothers cry… It’s as if your own mother is crying. So we have to be tough. (Working here) really plays with our emotions.”
The staff also talked about a sense of responsibility towards their patients and the fulfilment they derived from their jobs – both of which were a recurring theme on the day FMT spent accompanying the team as they went about their daily routine.
The teamwork and camaraderie within the group was clear. The medics and drivers rotate every day, allowing all the members of the closely knit group to learn about each others’ working habits.
During their down time, they have a quick bite at a restaurant below their office, enjoy a drink in the pantry or trade jokes in the office lounge.
Located on the second floor of a nondescript block of shoplots in Puchong, the office doesn’t even have a signboard to inform the area’s residents about the ambulance service. Word of mouth is the best advertising anyway.
Such matters make little difference to chief driver Mohd Fazli Ajid@ Aziz, a 42-year-old who honed his craft with a five-year stint driving ambulances at KLIA.
Apart from teaching him proper driving techniques, his time spent at the airport allowed him to learn CPR and familiarise himself with ambulances and their equipment.
Fazli spoke of the sense of duty he had as a driver, fully aware that in emergency situations, patients’ lives depended on him reaching their location – and ferrying them to the hospital – on time.
He said ambulance drivers often found themselves faced with motorists who refuse to give way or others who like to tailgate an ambulance, both of which he overcame by keeping a cool head.
“Whatever the challenges we face on the road… The patients’ lives are in our hands,” he said. “We always have to be aware of our surroundings when driving. We cannot lose our focus.
“I don’t care if I am scolded by the patient’s family members for being late, the most important thing is that I save the patient.”
CPM’s ambulance service can be reached at 011-55052148. - FMT
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