My neighbour’s father died because of lack of knowledge about basic life support measures on part of Rescue 1122.
LAHORE: I want to highlight the disgraceful and abysmal performance of the paramedical personnel of Rescue 1122. My neighbour’s sick and elderly father had fallen unconscious and despite the paramedics arriving on the scene within ten minutes, they waited for a couple of minutes for God knows what reason before they administered any sort of medical aid to him. I am a doctor myself. When I found out what had happened, I arrived on the scene and began CPR — a task the paramedics should have started at once, provided they did not first think of taking him to hospital right away. They were so incompetent that they did not even know how to fit a face mask on, perform a carotid pulse palpation, perform CPR properly or even load the gurney in the ambulance. (It took them two minutes to get the gurney in!) The ambulance did not have defibrillators, nor did the driver have knowledge of the nearest hospital. The entire time I had to instruct them about how to perform first aid. Sadly, my neighbour was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
My neighbour’s father died because of the lack of knowledge about basic life support measures on the part of the Rescue 1122 staff and the fact that they do not have a fully equipped ambulance. It shocks me to think that the lives of Pakistanis are in the hands of such incompetent professionals. The government must restructure the entire service immediately if it wants to claim that the Rescue 1122 services are ‘helpful’.
Taimoor Salman Zahid
Published in The Express Tribune, October 24th, 2012.
