March 3, 2006
By Tammy O'Reilly
PARAMEDIC Lawrence Makgamatha pours some disinfectant on to a cloth and begins cleaning the inside of ambulance number J04, wiping down places that even the most fastidious workers would miss.
His partner, Oupa Matjie, meticulously arranges the equipment. Spine boards, stethoscope, oxygen - everything is checked and put into place.
"I think it's going to be a good day," predicts Makgamatha as he jumps out of the ambulance to admire his work. "It's already half past seven and we are still at Central. Usually by this time we are already on a call."
Paramedic Lawrence Makgamatha cleans the inside of ambulance J04
He has barely uttered those words when a private vehicle pulls into Central Fire Station in Kruis Street in downtown Joburg. The agitated driver gets out and, before she can say a thing, a group of paramedics is already assisting her passenger, who is having an asthma attack.
They work methodically, calming the patient and giving her oxygen to help her breathe. By this time Makgamatha and Matjie have already taken a stretcher from the ambulance and in no time the anxious driver is following J04 to Linksfield Park Clinic.
Makgamatha is at the wheel, cautiously going through red robots and weaving through the early morning traffic congestion. Most cars make way, but some pedestrians give him disapproving looks as he shocks them with a single loud hoot for ambling across the street when they can see an ambulance approaching.
"The worst are the taxi drivers," he says. "They will hear the sirens and they will see you coming, but they won't move out of the way and sometimes they wait for me to go through a red robot and then all of them follow."
In the back of the ambulance Matjie is tending to the patient. She is calmer now and holds the oxygen mask tightly in place as she gives answers to all the personal particulars that Matjie requests.
There's plenty of paperwork in this business. Every patient who is in a position to speak needs to give their name, address, allergies, previous illnesses and other medically related questions. The driver also needs to fill in forms detailing the number of kilometres travelled to the scene, from the scene to a hospital and the time that all of this took - all the while keeping in touch with the command centre regarding the patient's progress.
At the hospital, a copy of the asthma patient's information is handed over to the nurses, who then take responsibility for her. Satisfied that she is in good hands, Matjie and Makgamatha make their way to the canteen.
"We don't get a lunch break so we must eat whenever we get the chance," says Matjie, biting into his steak and kidney pie.
"Juliet Zero Four respond to maternity at the Diplomat Hotel, ninth floor," blurts out the voice on the intercom.
"For sure," responds Makgamatha.
The rundown rooms at the Diplomat Hotel have been converted into residences, where apparently each tenant has to pay R60 a day to stay there. It is dingy, dimly lit, and there's a putrefying odour in the hallways. The lifts only go up to the eighth floor and it is the stairs the rest of the way.
Inside room 901 the patient is lying in a foetal position on the bed, clutching her stomach and writhing in pain. She is four months pregnant and is bleeding heavily.
"She has definitely lost her baby, just make sure you save her," her roommate pleads with the paramedics as all three of them help her walk down the stairs to the lift.
At the Johannesburg Hospital the patient is given painkillers and told to wait for the test results from blood and urine samples.
From there it is straight to the corner of Louis Botha and First avenues, where a motorcyclist has been hit by a van. Although his bike is badly damaged and he is shaky, he shows no signs of serious injury. He still needs to be taken to a hospital, though, in case of internal injury. But there's a hold-up when the motorcyclist refuses to be taken to hospital until his employer arrives.
"Patients refuse to be transferred to hospital all the time - even if they are badly injured. And there is nothing we can do about that," says Matjie. "They also have the right to refuse any medical attention."
He says that plenty of money and valuable time is also wasted when people call out ambulances for trivial ailments like headaches and stomach cramps.
Again, they have no choice but to respond to every call. He attributes this to the public's lack of knowledge about how the emergency services operate.
Calls are taken at the emergency call centre and the command centre in each region dispatches the closest and first available ambulance to the scene. The Central Fire Station has just two ambulances, which respond mainly to incidents in the inner city, Berea, Malvern, Brixton and Turffontein.
"There are instances when we are called out as far as Benoni, but that doesn't happen very often because then no-one will be available to cover our area," explains Matjie. "We have to assist wherever we can because our job is about saving lives. We can't say no to somebody [just] because they are not in our area."
The firefighting component at the station includes one fire engine and one incident command vehicle. This state-of-the-art vehicle is equipped with technology that allows the operators to assess the scene and call for emergency personnel and equipment as it is needed.
Apart from extinguishing fires, firemen are called out to almost every car accident since they also have the means to remove people from vehicles. Fire engines are fitted with water, hoses that attach to fire hydrants, ladders and oxygen canisters.
The empty oxygen canisters weigh about 20 kilograms. The gear weighs about six kilograms and can stand temperatures of up to 3 000 degrees Celsius for about 30 seconds before catching alight.
Makgamatha and Matjie are also trained to work with the fire engine. They learned the basics about firefighting during a six-month training course and their services are always handy in a place where it is sometimes a struggle to handle the demand.
"I was right," says Makgamatha just before his shift changes." We weren't so busy today and there were no life-threatening injuries. I wish Friday and weekend nights were like this. At least then we know that people are behaving themselves and mothers and fathers are not dying."
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