Candles

Today is a day for lighting candles. The single candle is for the future of Malaysia, for cleaning our own backyard, and for everything Malaysia represents. Click here for more details.

The next set of candles are for sinergy.starfall. A good friend and the founder /keeper of this blog. Happy birthday my friend.

RANT : First aid : another reason not to live in this country.

What would you do if this were real? Or any of the other images below this. Would YOU know what to do? Can anyone in Malaysia, ANYONE, predict how long it’d take an ambulance to arrive if you called for one? We all know Malaysia is far from a developed country. The Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Malaysia is far from the quality or even quantity of many other countries. Knowing this, shouldn’t it even be more necessary for us, the citizens of this country, to be adept at first aid? The awareness of first aid in this country is, to put it in a nice way – DISMAL.

I re-attended an empact (emergency patient care training) course a couple of weekends ago. When I took leave off work to go for it, a few questions was asked. Things like “WAH, who are you going to save?” or “What are you going to do with it?” or “Know first aid got benefit ar?” On top of that, on Saturday night (after half of the course was completed), when I told a close relative “Did you know 80% of CPR…..”, she attempted to finish my sentence with “kills the patient” I just went “……………………………………………………………………………………..”

The awareness of first aid in this country is dismal. CPR awareness is worse than dismal. I’ve got a false sense of security, in the sense that I’ve been exposed to first aid all my life, and have always had (and still do have) the secret dream of becoming a paramedic. Formal exposure to first aid knowledge came when I was 15, when I spent 2 year doing various life-saving/life-guarding courses. I also got a St. John. basic first aid qualification during that period. The few years after that was pretty quiet, but first-aid exposure was still pretty much constant, though more practice than training. Quite often, I was the most experienced/qualified person to perform first aid when I’m at scouts/buddhistyouth/other voluntary bodies/activities.

Receiving comments like that from the general public actually pissed me off quite a bit. First aid isn’t about ‘who’ I want to save, or ‘who’ I want to perform it on. First aid isn’t about benefit to oneself, even though it IS important to one’s own wellbeing if the situation arises. Knowledge which saves lives is knowledge better learnt than not. 80% of lay-person CPR is performed on a family member. Which means that if I, a person who isn’t a professional healthcare provider, were to perform CPR one day, there is a four in five chance that it would be on a parent/sibiling/child/grandparent/aunt/uncle.

So, to answer their questions. Who am I going to save? Anyone who needs me to perform CPR, who is more likely to be a family member than not. What am I going to do with it? I’m going to help people with it. What benefite can I derive from it? I may save lifes with it, my own, my family, my friends, who knows. Lay-person first aid is important, especially in a country where healthcare professionals are hard to find. They are few and far in between, especially in non-clinical settings. I may need to splint a broken leg halfway down Mt. Tahan. Or I may need to treat a snatch-thieve victim for shock on the way to work. Or I may need to safe a chocking neice. Who knows?

Do onto others as you wish that they should do to you. I learn first aid because I may need it one day, and so may others. (heck, I’ve been in plenty of situations where good knowledge of first aid and infection control would have save me and others some pain and some trouble). I learn first aid because I hope, in some bizarre twist of karma, that if I ever need medical help, someone suitably equipped will be there to help me.

WHAT is wrong with people!!!! HOW can anyone not understand the importance of first aid and cpr and heimleich and c-spine immobilisation and etc etc etc!!!! HOW can anyone think ’someone else will know it’. Gosh…. people…. sigh…. (is it people of the world in general? Or is it just the tidak apa attitude of Malaysians? Probably a bit of both, but I encounter a lot more ‘tidak apa’ (couldn’t care less) from Malaysians than I do elsewhere. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Kopitiam

I was having lunch in KL with some friends today, and by and by we ended up drinking chinese tea and discussing Malaysian politics. The session evolved into an intriguing Q&A session with some interesting questions. One of them was concerning the racial harmony we had around the Merdeka years and whether we’ll ever have that level of communication, cooperation and friendship between the races ever again.

A friend then mentioned that she liked going to old chinese kopitiams, specifically the ones where she can see her grandfather with his Malay and Indian friends who may’ve worked in both the government and private sectors sitting around one table and talking about everything under the sun. That sight used to be pretty common 20 years ago, and it was a dime a dozen 40 years back. But as that generation of people decrease in numbers, so too do these picture perfect sightings of true friendship between the different races. The only other place we can think off where we’ve encountered these sightings are in overseas Malaysian communities. In cities like London where there are large numbers of Malaysians working, it is also common. They would generally be aged above 25 and have a stable job. Some may be married with young children. The most common topics of conversation for these two groups are the same. They reminisce about Malaysia and the past, and they talk about the current state of Malaysia – its shortcomings and its politics.

Is there anything in common which unite these two very different groups of people, who do the same thing in similar surroundings?  Yes.  Neither are very much affected by current government policies.  One group is retired and has nary a worry in the world, and the other group have pretty much migrated out of the country.  They do not feel the recent racial tensions caused by keris-wavers, nor the gender-inequality by the bumbung-leak-commenters, etc etc.  In short, they are unaffected by it, and thus they can talk about it among themselves without feeling stressed out or wound up.  The people who are affected by it talk about it too, but only in little groups they feel cormfortable with, because there is no longer any communication, cooperation or friendship between the races.

What happened to the frienship?  Why are the only people who can maintain these friendships people who are unaffected by the government policies.  Is the lack of racial harmony a reflection of what 50 years of Merdeka has done to the country?  Are we better off for it?  Tepuk dada tanya selera……