Emergency services in Hong Kong put others to shame
- They are far from perfect, but ambulance wait times are nothing to complain about compared to those in Britain, and unlike in the US its police do not have rising kill tolls
Despite its recent trials and tribulations, it’s worth remembering Hong Kong’s resilience. No matter what other people say, the city works.
As reported yesterday, the Fire Services Department confessed to serious inadequacies in the past two years. Its ambulance service failed to hit its 12-minute response time target for six months last year as demands surged during the fifth Covid-19 wave.
Although emergency workers were able to respond to 88 per cent of ambulance calls inside the 12-minute mark overall last year, it still fell short of the department’s performance pledge of 92.5 per cent. Horror of horrors!
In Britain last year, patients had to wait up to two-and-a-half days for an ambulance amid the mounting public health service crisis from strikes. In South West England, a patient was forced to wait 59.5 hours for an ambulance.
The longest delay in the East of England was almost 40 hours, with waiting times of up to 36 hours reported in the East Midlands, and 29 hours in the North West of Britain. In Bangor, North Wales, a 93-year-old woman with a broken hip waited 25 hours for an ambulance and another 12 hours for hospital admission. This is starting to look third world. Christina McAnea, an emergency service union boss, said if patients died, it was not the fault of service providers but the British government.
A BN(O) highway to a cost-of-living hell
I know BN(O)ers idolise mother Britain. The grass tends to look greener on the other side, especially if you have never gone over. But now that they have been there, realities are starting to sink in.
Meanwhile, we should really stop calling Hong Kong’s police force Asia’s finest. That’s just arrogant and inappropriate. But at least they are not murderous, when compared to some leading Western countries which, ironically, have criticised and even sanctioned the local force for brutality.
According to a statistical comparison provided by Fridayeveryday, a local news portal: “During the Yellow Vest protests in France in 2018-19, for example, there were 11 people killed by the police, with five people, due to grenades, losing their hands, and another 23 losing their eyesight, as French Mediapart reported.
“When the anti-government protests erupted in Chile in 2019, the police killed 23 people, with 2,300 injured.”
When it comes to police killings of civilians in the United States, last year was the deadliest on record. Citing Mapping Police Violence (MPV), the US non-profit research group in the same article, it continued: “US law enforcers killed at least 1,176 people in 2022 … By comparison, the police killed 1,145 people in 2021; 1,152 in 2020; 1,097 in 2019; 1,140 in 2018; and 1,089 in 2017.”
A significant number of the killings could have been avoided instead of escalating, whereby police officers effectively served as judge, jury and executioner.
Those who want Hong Kong to fail will end up disappointed
Summarising the MPV report, “In 2022, 132 killings (11 per cent) were cases in which no offence was alleged; 104 cases (9 per cent) were mental health or welfare checks; 98 (8 per cent) involved traffic violations; and 207 (18 per cent) involved other allegations of nonviolent offences.
“There were also 93 cases (8 per cent) involving claims of a domestic disturbance and 128 (11 per cent) where the person was allegedly seen with a weapon. Only 370 (31 per cent) involved a potentially more serious situation, with an allegedly violent crime.”
Funny how the US is sanctioning Hong Kong. Maybe it should sanction itself.
Remember how brutal and murderous Hong Kong police were supposed to be during the anti-government riots of 2019. Supposedly officers had raped, murdered and then burned the bodies of victims to conceal their crimes! A former reporting colleague whom I thought was smart and educated really believed all that nonsense. I guess there is really no accounting for people caught up in collective derangement.
In reality, no one was raped or murdered. In fact, no one was killed by the police for more than six months of arson and mayhem. That wasn’t a miracle, it was discipline.
So, let me say this to Hong Kong’s emergency services. You people are not perfect. You often fall short. You are not the best. But you are damned sure better than most of your foreign critics!
