A true "Malaysia Boleh" story

Zara Davies Abdul Rahman
Dec 15, 06 5:09pm

On Dec 13, at about 1.30pm, there was a road traffic accident involving a
driver driving a dark blue Proton Saga and the victim, a highway road
sweeper, male, approximately in the mid-20s. The location of the accident
was about 150 ? 200 meters from the Batu Tiga toll booth (Elite highway) in
the direction towards KLIA.

I chanced upon this accident (which had just happened) while on my way back
to work from Ampang via the Kesas highway. As I approached the accident
site, it seemed the victim was already dead, the driver who had knocked him
down was standing nearby and nobody dared approach to lend assistance to
the victim - almost as if this was one time were an invasion of privacy was
taboo.

I stopped my vehicle and approached and upon examining the accident victim,
I found him to be still alive but heavily concussed, his pupils were
completely dilated. Suddenly the victim grabbed my hand and tried with all
his might to raise himself to his feet. I tried to calm him and asked the
bystanders if an ambulance had been called. I was told it had not.

In a firm tone, I told the driver of the car that hit the victim to call
for an ambulance. He dialed 999, it rang until it didn't ring anymore. He
rang again, again it was not answered. He rang again and passed the phone
to me. Finally someone answered (a man).

I informed him that I was reporting an accident a few hundred meters away
from the Batu Tiga toll in the direction of KLIA. He asked me my phone
number and my name and which hospital was the nearest. I gave the info and
added that the nearest hospital to deal with this kind of trauma was
probably Klang.

At 1.57pm I received a call from the phone number 03- 3371 7989 - the
ambulance control centre at the Klang Hospital. The guy in charge of the
control centre asked to speak to me and asked for the location of the
accident which I gave, adding that the victim was dying and that this was
an extreme emergency.

The guy manning the control centre did not know my location, so I repeated
it clearly and concisely. It seemed that he needed to understand it for
himself otherwise he could not pass on the information and dispatch the
ambulance. It was a frustrating conversation. I repeated the details of my
location and he asked me if I was sure that Klang was the nearest hospital.
I repeated firmly, yes.

I told him the injuries of the victim, hoping he would feel the urgency.
Instead he wanted to know whether

'dia jatuh motor ke...?'

I told him politely that his question was completely irrelevant and to
hurry up with the ambulance. I had to hang up and attend to the victim. I
called back at 2.06pm to ask if an ambulance had been dispatched. The same
guy told me

'belum'.

He asked me the same questions. I answered them.

I warned him that the next time I make a call would be to the menteri
besar's office to complain about his shoddy professionalism, so he'd better
send out that ambulance immediately. I then called someone I knew at 2.08pm
who helped call the Klang Hospital on my behalf to request they send out an
ambulance immediately.

I waited and called the emergency control centre at Klang Hospital at
2.36pm and asked the same guy if an ambulance had been dispatched. Same
answer,

'belum'.

He requested me to repeat the accident location again, which I did. This
time I told him that he need not understand it but to just writes it down
and give it to the ambulance driver along with my handphone number.

I waited again. The victim was rolling in pain on the road, his head had a
gash about 10cm long on the back, and the skin on his head was beginning to
peel off. His left leg was completely broken and was hanging by the flesh
but the main artery was not severed. He was not losing much blood. His
workmate was cradling him in his arms and asking him to

'mengucap kalimah syahadah' .

I tried to stop further damage to his left leg by securing it to his right
leg. I told the few people around that he is going to die if we don't get
him to hospital. Everyone was reluctant to put him in their cars, all kinds
of excuses, 'ada barang, kotor lah, berdarah la'. Meanwhile the victim was
grabbing on to my clothes and body in pain, unable to talk possibly due to
his head injury.

Finally the driver who knocked him down allowed us to use his car to send
the victim to the hospital. But he was too shaken-up to drive. Another
gentleman offered to drive but did not know how to exit the Elite highway
to get towards the Klang Hospital. I asked him to follow me and so we drove
off as fast as we could head towards the Federal Highway to Klang. We had
to go through so many toll gates, some after paying though some after
explaining briefly, let us through.

On the Federal Highway despite our attempts to notify motorists that we
were in a state of emergency, many blocked our path and only relented to
give way when I practically sat on my car horn.

We arrived in Klang and I called the emergency control centre guy for
directions to the hospital. I was by this time quite distressed and
pronounced the name of the hospital wrongly. The guy in the control center
told me there was no such hospital in Klang, so I said to him.

'Have you sent out an ambulance to the Batu Tiga toll accident site? No,
right? So since you cannot understand where the accident is, we are sending
the victim to you. This is an emergency can you give me directions to your
hospital or not?'

Finally he did. When we arrived at the Klang Hospital, I had a hard time
looking for the staff to bring a trolley to remove the victim from the car.
I asked for assistance from two nurses but did not receive a response. I
took a trolley and pushed it to the car, suddenly a hospital aide appeared,
then another, as we tried to remove the victim's body from the car. It was
then that the co-worker who had been cradling the victim in the car said
that he had stopped breathing.

The hospital aides rushed the victim into the Accident & Emergency room and
I followed. As he was wheeled in there was no immediate response from the
doctors. It was obvious this young man with his whole life ahead of him had
died in the car on the way to the hospital.
I was so angry, my words were simple,

'Kecuaian pihak hospital menghantar ambulans membantu mangsa ini telah
mengecewakan rakyat'.

The aide asked me to be calm. How could any human being be calm when faced
with such stupidity and total lack of regard for human life? The aide
showed me an identity card and asked me to confirm if this was the victim.
I confirmed. I briefly saw the name Mohd Yusry and his age was somewhere in
his mid-20s. As I walked away from the A&E room in disgust I saw the
control centre. A guy was sitting in it with a female nurse looking at a
computer (very close and comfy).

I approached him and asked if he was the person who took my calls, he knew
my name and I asked him for his, he declined. I asked him why he did not
dispatch an ambulance to which he replied something brash.

I asked him if he was happy as the victim was unnecessarily dead and that I
am going to ensure that his lackadaisical attitude to his job was brought
to the public attention. I asked him for his name again along with the
nurse who was sitting next to him 'playing' with the computer. He refused
to give it to me.

Feeling very frustrated I called my friend, who earlier helped route my
call and informed him that regretfully the road accident victim - a young
Malay man - had died in the car on the way to the hospital and that no
ambulance had been dispatched.

This is not the first time I have called for an ambulance and used the 999
services. Every time I have called for an ambulance it has never arrived,
never. Why? This is the first road accident victim whom I have helped who
has actually died. Everyone else I have helped before this has survived.

The issues that need to be addressed are:

1. The strategic location of a free government hospital able to deal with
serious road accident trauma in Shah Alam (densely populated area with much
traffic activity). and/or Emergency response centres created where the
Balai Bomba have special ambulances and police squad cars for dispatching
only to accident/incident locations and to the nearest hospital/police
stations (ambulances need not be parked permanently at hospitals).

2. Road signs giving clear and proper directions to hospitals (there are
hardly any such signs now).

3. Special emergency exits through toll gates and signs declaring their
existence plus a phone number to call ahead so that they can be opened.

4. The name of the highways such as Elite, Kesas, Federal Highway, etc, be
clearly advertised so that road users are able to identify their locations
under emergency circumstances.

5. Professionally trained personnel with various language skills who have
true empathy and value for the human life manning emergency response
centres. Who consistently answer calls on the first or second ring.

6. An emergency station located at the hospital emergency parking lot with
a big sign above it (similar to the car jockey service at hotels) to
receive patients. That is manned 24 hours a day and never ever left
unattended.

7. An ISO response time from the time you send out an SOS call to 999 that
will ensure you receive the assistance you need within 15 minutes.

These are my simple suggestions. Life is precious and should be preserved
above all else. Without regard for one another what kind of country are we
leaving for our children