Use GPS technology to reduce emergency services delay, says MP
Kota Kinabalu MP Chan Foong Hin has urged the Malaysian Emergency Response System (MERS) 999 to utilise GPS technology to reduce delays in emergency services arriving where they are needed.
This comes after a man died due to cardiac arrest after crashing his car in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah yesterday.
The ambulance reportedly arrived...
Kota Kinabalu MP Chan Foong Hin has urged the Malaysian Emergency Response System (MERS) 999 to utilise GPS technology to reduce delays in emergency services arriving where they are needed.
This comes after a man died due to cardiac arrest after crashing his car in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, yesterday.
The ambulance reportedly arrived one hour after an emergency call was made to MERS999.
“In the Klang Valley, users of RapidKL buses can track the arrival of their buses through a mobile app utilising GPS (Global Positioning System).
“Elsewhere and even here in Sabah, road users have been using GPS apps such as Google Maps and Waze to get to their destination, and they are also able to easily share locations using WhatsApp or Facebook.
“It is time that MERS999 makes use of such GPS technology to reduce delays in the existing MERS999 emergency services, failing which it may end up redundant and people end up being disillusioned with the government machinery, which can only then be described as a failed government,” Chan said in a statement last night.
Delay in emergency services arrival
This is not the first time someone had perished due to a delay in emergency services arriving at the scene of the emergency, he said.
Chan, who is a DAP member, said he had last year raised in Parliament this same issue after a family of four perished in a fire in Penampang due to the fire brigade’s late arrival.
Every second counts in an emergency, he said, as the longer the delay, the higher the likelihood that life will be lost.
“There are reasons why emergency services are deemed part of a country’s strategic asset as they play a role no different from that of a country’s defence in that it is supposed to save lives,” he said.
As such, he urged MERS999 to provide a detailed explanation for the ambulance arriving one hour after the call was made in the incident yesterday.
“Is it due to the lack of exact location? Is it due to the lack of ambulances? Is it due to a lack of manpower? Or is it due to sheer nonchalance and lack of a sense of urgency by the call centre?” Chan questioned.
Later this evening, Bernama quoted Sabah health director Dr Rose Nani Mudin saying MERS999 had received the call at 12.06pm, but the call was dropped while being connected from the MERS999 Regional Centre to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Medical Emergency Call Centre (MECC).
The centre and MECC made six attempts to contact the caller between 12.07pm and 12.19pm but failed. Since the location of the incident is unclear, an ambulance could not be deployed.
This is until 1.01pm when another caller contacted MERS999 with complete information about the incident. A team of first responders from Queen Elizabeth II Hospital was activated at 1.04pm, which arrived at the scene 12 minutes later.
However, they found no sign of life on the casualty.
