The Health and Other Service Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (Hospersa) is shocked to learn of the latest attack on an ambulance in the Cape Town area.  The Union condemns the attack, and questions why the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) members were not warned of the imminent danger in the area.

A provincial health ambulance responding to a call in Nyanga, outside Cape Town, was stoned by community members participating in a service delivery protest on Tuesday.  The stones injured one of the EMS members and damaged the ambulance.  The injured EMS member was rushed to hospital for treatment.  Both EMS members have subsequently been removed from duty and are now receiving trauma counselling.

“The protest action is becoming life threatening to EMS members,” said Hospersa Western Cape Provincial Chairperson, Michael Serelina.  “We question why this happened because the members were not informed timeously to avoid the area,” he added.

Nyanga is one of the so-called red zones where ambulances should not respond to calls without being escorted by the South African Police Service (SAPS).

“The red zones intervention is a step in the right direction, but in this case it failed us,” said Serelina.  “We maintain that the Department (of Health), both nationally and provincially, is not doing enough.  We wrote an open letter to the MEC in January, and our federation, FEDUSA [the Federation of Unions of South Africa] wrote a similar letter to Minister [of Health, Dr Aaron] Motsoaledi.  We asked for urgent intervention to protect our members when serving the community.  We have had a response from the MEC, but not yet from the Minister,” Serelina concluded.

Issued by Hospersa