MANILA, Sept 13, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Gridlock in Manila is costing lives as
ambulances stuck in traffic face severe delays in the race against the clock
to reach the city’s hospitals, medics warn.
Special lanes for emergency vehicles are not enforced, the infrastructure
is outdated, and local drivers are often unwilling or unable to make way — a
situation experts say is causing patients to die en route.
“You feel empty. It is as if you were not given a chance to do everything
in your capacity to help,” ambulance driver and paramedic Joseph Laylo told
AFP.
“If the traffic was not that bad it could have saved the patient,” he
added, recalling how he lost a patient when congestion tripled the time to
hospital.
Even with an encyclopedic knowledge of short cuts or aggressive driving
such as blasting their horns or bumping unyielding vehicles, it is not always
enough to arrive in time.
Driver Adriel Aragon is still haunted after losing a critically ill patient
when it took 40 minutes to reach the hospital — the journey should have
taken half that time.
“No matter how hard we honk, even if we use our siren, if the vehicles are
not moving it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“That’s what happened that time,” Aragon added of the 2014 tragedy.
Five minutes before they reached the hospital the woman’s pulse
disappeared. She was pronounced dead after they wheeled her into the
emergency room.
At peak hours, the main arteries of Manila are clogged with idling cars —
a 25-kilometre (16-mile) end to end drive through the main highway can take
as long as three hours.
Home to some 13 million, there is nearly one vehicle registered per person.
The resulting gridlock costs the city $67 million daily in lost productivity,
according to a 2017 Japanese government-funded study.
– Life or death –
Neither the government nor ambulance companies keep count of how many
patients die in traffic each year, officials said, but emergency medical
workers in the city have many horror stories.
Laylo says one patient died inside his ambulance after heavy traffic on a
narrow road added 10 minutes to the journey from the patient’s home to the
hospital.
“It was about 5.7 kilometres. Normally it would take us less than five
minutes, but it took us 15 minutes that time,” Laylo explained.
“When you’re trying to save a person’s life, that is very slow,” he said,
still upset by the 2017 incident.
Images of ambulances stalled in unmoving traffic jams have sparked outrage
on social media in the Philippines.
One of the most notorious examples — which has been viewed over 3.2
million times online — was filmed by a woman shocked that cars wouldn’t or
couldn’t give way to the ambulance carrying her mother.
“I was very angry. I was worried too because we couldn’t do anything about
the vehicles blocking our lane,” the woman, Jing Zamora, told AFP.
The trip took hours, when it should have taken minutes. Zamora’s mother,
who suffered a stroke, survived the trip to the hospital but died there a
week later.
A swift medical response is key to recovery, according to the American
Stroke Association.
Officials like Aldo Mayor, public safety chief of the Metropolitan Manila
Development Authority (MMDA), put at least part of the blame on other road
users.
“Some people simply do not care. It is as if they are the only residents of
this world,” said Mayor, whose government agency manages the capital’s
chaotic traffic.
He added that Manila ordinances concerning emergency vehicles, including a
2017 regulation that reserves one lane for them, are rarely enforced due to
personnel constraints.
– ‘Ambulances cannot levitate’ –
These problems come as Manila’s population has roughly doubled since 1985
and its infrastructure has not kept up.
Its limited system of commuter rail is augmented by jeepney mini-buses and
millions of cars.
The nation’s thicket of bureaucracy and deep-rooted corruption have stalled
or blocked efforts to build new roads, bridges and public transit.
President Rodrigo Duterte pledged to unblock the capital’s choking
gridlock, but halfway through his term the city’s main thoroughfare, EDSA,
remains a parking lot at rush hour.
The sheer number of cars on the roads is a major factor in whether
ambulances can get their patients to hospital quickly, said Vernon Sarne, a
long-time automotive journalist.
“Even when you want to give way, but the motorway is full, what can we do?
The ambulance cannot levitate,” he told AFP.
However Sarne noted that drivers have become cynical, thinking ambulances
might be using their lights and sirens just to cut through the traffic for
non-emergencies.
“As a motoring public we are jaded to the fact that everyone is taking
advantage of us,” he said, adding some politicians use emergency vehicles
escorts to avoid the gridlock.
Yet ambulance operators in Manila hope public shaming on social media, like
Zamora’s viral video, can help.
“Because of social media, we found more and more people are giving way,
giving (us) the benefit of the doubt,” Michael Deakin, the head of one of the
nation’s largest ambulance companies told AFP.