Johannesburg, South Africa – “I used to be trying down to assist the affected person [when] I noticed somebody come into the room. I noticed the boots, and once I appeared up I used to be staring right into a gun.”
It’s a heat October evening in Meyerton, south of Johannesburg, and Sonia*, a senior paramedic working for a personal ambulance service, is recounting a very harrowing day at work in South Africa’s crime-ridden financial capital. She is in her early 40s and doesn’t wish to be recognized to guard her privateness.
“The man mentioned to me: “Hold quiet, hold quiet. Go down!” At first Sonia briefly thought he could be a safety guard as a result of the emergency call-out was in a rich suburban space.
“However then I realised they’re busy robbing us and the home. I feel they adopted us.”
Sonia’s affected person, who was affected by a mind embolism, began screaming. However the gunmen pushed all of them to the bottom. “I’m considering ‘What am I going to do?’ As a result of it’s in me to assist an individual,” Sonia recounts.
“He had a gun behind me and I’m considering I have to simply do what he tells or I’m gonna die,” she continues. Her assailant took her jewelry whereas screaming threats of: “We’ll shoot you within the abdomen! We’ll shoot you within the abdomen!”
Dealing with the bottom, Sonia heard a whistle after which a automobile engine, earlier than trying as much as discover the attackers gone. Shaken, she rushed to test on her affected person. “The affected person’s blood stress now was extraordinarily excessive and he or she began having matches,” Sonia says. “However then the police come and the backup comes and all the things was OK afterwards.”
She thought she was high quality after that, however days later the trauma hit. “9 days afterward I get post-traumatic shock. I get up and I’m screaming to my husband: ‘They’re on the roof, they’re on the roof!’ After which I begin crying, and I’m crying the entire evening,” she says.
Sonia went for counselling to assist her recuperate and is totally again at work now. “I’ve been on this trade for 20 years. I realized to remain targeted. You focus on the accidents. You begin to change into like a machine doing one, two, three, 4.”
South Africa has the fifth highest crime rate on this planet, in line with 2024 statistics from the World Inhabitants Assessment, which notes, specifically, its excessive ranges of assault and violent crime. Lately, first responders and emergency companies have reported a rising variety of assaults on their workers and automobiles – some ending in damage and even dying.
Based on Foster Mohale, spokesperson for the Nationwide Division of Well being, the variety of assaults in opposition to emergency medical companies (EMS) personnel has elevated since 2014. “The annual frequency of assaults has various, with reported cases starting from 30 to 109,” Mohale mentioned.
‘False calls’
In Meyerton, Sonia and her ambulance colleagues collect on the scene of a minor bike crash involving a household in an SUV. The bike driver’s face is bloody and barely swollen, however he’s in any other case high quality. He wasn’t carrying a helmet, so this was his – very – fortunate day.
With solely minor accidents, Sonia’s companies aren’t wanted, so she catches up with two different responding paramedics who work for a nonprofit volunteer non-public ambulance service earlier than heading out on different calls.
This primary name of the evening is a quiet one for the volunteer paramedics Cecil Parsons, 33, and his accomplice, Gavin Arrow, 32, who work with the Group Emergency Response Staff South Africa (CERT-SA). It was set as much as present multidisciplinary emergency help to the general public, freed from cost, whether or not or not the individual has medical insurance coverage. Their core focus is emergency medical response however in addition they attend to fireplace and animal rescues, and provide trauma help.
It quickly will get busy. Parsons’ radio blares. “MVA” (motorcar accident), he says. It’s 18:24 on the dashboard clock and the solar is setting. There are seven sufferers ready for assist after a pick-up truck rolled on the freeway: 4 of them are “P2” – pressing, three of them are much less injured. or “P3”.
“Charlie Mike 10 responding,” he says into the walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder.
It’s a 30-kilometre drive at excessive velocity in Parsons’ Suzuki Fronx and his face is taut with focus as he weaves his means by way of the final of the day’s site visitors.
“That gave me goosebumps,” he says after listening to Sonia’s story. “It’s occurring increasingly more to us.”
He friends into the oncoming white headlamps and the twilight on the highway speeding by. “We must be secure on this name,” he says. “We most likely received’t be the primary to reach on scene.”
Parsons is quiet {and professional}. Arrow says little as they drive. Parsons has a day job as a gross sales consultant for oncology medicines, and he volunteers on his days off. Arrow works as a contract facilitator for a metal manufacturing facility and he determined to start out serving to Parsons three years in the past. He has primary first assist coaching and his function is usually as an operational assistant, dealing with sufferers, carrying and cleansing tools and making certain highway security whereas they work.
Parsons has been concerned in an attempted armed hold-up. He and his accomplice had been known as out to the sting of city. “We got a landmark,” he says. “Nevertheless it was darkish, and nobody was round. It felt incorrect. We noticed two folks strategy from the entrance, after which there was a sound on the again. Folks making an attempt to open the ambulance door. I simply put foot on the accelerator, and we heard two photographs go off at us as we drove. We had been in shock. I known as 999 and mentioned: ‘This can be a false name’, however they informed us ‘No, the affected person remains to be there.’”
There was no time for a police escort, so Parsons and his accomplice returned. The assailants had left and Parsons and his colleague had been capable of drive past the landmark once more to search out the affected person at his dwelling the place he was sick and nonetheless ready for assist.
“It was an opportunistic try. They only needed to steal our telephones and the tools within the automobile.”
‘Inconceivable to maintain observe’
Every of South Africa’s 9 provinces has a Division of Well being with a authorities ambulance service. As well as, the nation has some 200 non-public ambulance companies nationwide.
And the menace to emergency medical staff has been rising, whether or not they’re with the federal government or a personal service – although laborious numbers are troublesome to nail down.
“We now have seen a severe and really regarding enhance in assaults on EMS personnel purely to rob or hijack the ambulance crews,” says Oliver Wright of the South African Personal Ambulance & Emergency Companies Affiliation (SAPAESA). “With there being so many alternative non-public and provincial ambulance companies in South Africa it makes it virtually inconceivable to maintain observe of all of those occurrences.”
On an earlier trip with Medi Response, one other non-public ambulance service within the metropolis, 28-year-old Muhammad Varachia says that it “has undoubtedly gotten worse over the past 10 years”.
In areas which can be considered harmful, EMS staff now typically insist that the affected person’s household or mates convey them to a police station the place they park the ambulance safely and can provide them important emergency remedy with out being threatened by criminals, and with out risking their very own lives.
Organisations designate particular areas as “Purple Zones”, the place EMS personnel can not go besides with a police escort. This can be a considerably haphazard strategy to security. “However there would possibly nonetheless be emergency instances in that space,” Varachia says. “So there’s the choice of a complete no-go otherwise you go to the police station, or the affected person is dropped at a secure zone.”
Byron La Hoe, the assistant director of communication on the Western Cape Division of Well being and Wellness, says there are roughly six assaults on EMS staff every month within the province. However due to a “multifaceted strategy to the safety of our EMS staff and their very own preparedness and vigilance,” the variety of assaults within the Cape has stabilised, he says.
Nonetheless, he provides, “this strategy will not be sustainable and impacts negatively on service supply”.
To Wright, the assaults on ambulance crews are symptomatic of a “failing, public security system” and rising crime in South Africa extra broadly.
“Till the South African authorities prioritises crime prevention, our EMS colleagues won’t ever be secure,” he says.
When requested to remark, the South African Police Service (SAPS) didn’t particularly point out assaults on EMS and first responders, pointing extra usually to its latest anticrime initiative, Operation Shanela, which tackles crime by way of roadblocks, cease and searches, and patrols.
“Via Operation Shanela nice strides are being made to arrest criminals concerned in all types of criminality together with theft, homicide and rape,” Police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe informed Al Jazeera in a press release. “Up to now by way of this operation which incorporates heightened police visibility, greater than 920,000 suspects have been arrested.”
‘Sorry, however he’s useless’
On the highway in Meyerton, Parsons turns off his siren at 18:45 because the crew arrives on the accident scene.
Two firetrucks and three ambulances with flashing lights within the rising darkness are already there, but it surely’s not sufficient to take care of the injured. One of many ambulance staff rushes as much as Parsons: “Will you triage that one?” The employee factors to a younger man mendacity in a newly ploughed subject. He was travelling at the back of the pick-up when it rolled off the freeway and he was thrown out onto the bottom. “He’s complaining of a ache in his proper aspect,” the ambulance employee says, and leaves the 2 paramedics to assist him.
Parsons places on rubber gloves and punctiliously goes over the younger man who’s aware however dizzy with ache.
Somebody within the darkness calls out: “There’s one other ambulance coming from Midvaal.” Parsons nods, however his consideration is on the younger man’s ache.
“Don’t transfer,” he tells the affected person. Arrow disappears into the evening and comes again with an aluminium stretcher and extra EMS staff. One among them holds the affected person’s head – they’re deeply fearful about neck and again damage.
Parsons, Arrow and two others fastidiously roll the affected person onto the stretcher and take him to the ambulance that has simply arrived.
Again within the Suzuki, Parsons says: “It’s at all times unhealthy if you’re the primary one to reach at a mass-casualty incident. Everyone seems to be shouting, they really feel like they’re those who need assistance first.”
He pauses. “We at all times deal with the quiet ones first. These are essentially the most badly injured.”
Cruising by way of the nighttime metropolis, Parsons recounts one other hazardous name.
“We had been known as out to a gang stabbing and the affected person was already useless after we bought there. They made us perceive, very properly,” Parsons grimaces, earlier than persevering with, “‘If this man dies, so do you guys.’”
“We had been by ourselves. There have been no police there but. So we needed to faux that we had been treating him. Put up a drip, take blood stress – so we may keep alive. Solely when the police arrived lets say ‘Sorry guys, however he’s useless.’”
Virtually each paramedic we spoke to has some story of being threatened by criminals.
In September this 12 months, 36-year-old Ronnie Motanyane of ALTOR EMS, a personal medical service targeted on security at occasions, was held up close to Soweto, whereas driving a clearly marked ambulance. His assailants threatened his life whereas they eliminated the GPS tracker and compelled him to switch his financial savings from his checking account utilizing his cell phone.
They then drove him to a second location the place they eliminated the EMS branding from the car. “I don’t know the place they went, however I heard them say ‘Let’s kill this man.’” However after he transferred all his financial savings to them, they lastly launched him.
He insists he nonetheless enjoys his job, and accepts that the dangers of violent assault now include it. “It occurs to the entire emergency medical service staff,” he says.
Nonetheless, he says, he feels indignant.
“If I see one other automobile cease in entrance of me, that anger comes [back].”
