Ambulance crew shortage costing lives, Shanghai experience shows

Yong Xinwei believes her father might still be alive today had an ambulance arrived much sooner after he collapsed at home early this year.

Her family called the medical-emergency service immediately in January when the 89-year-old lost consciousness, showing only the whites of his eyes, but the ambulance only arrived 90 minutes later.

"We called the emergency hotline three times, pleading with them to send the vehicle as quickly as possible. But we were told there was no ambulance available," said the woman, who lives in Shanghai's Putuo district. "The municipal emergency centre finally dispatched an ambulance from Zhabei district to pick up my father."

The elderly man passed away the next day. He had suffered a cardiac arrest several weeks earlier and had only recently been discharged from hospital.

Yong's experience is common in China's largest city, where residents face long waits after calling the medical-emergency hotline. This is due mainly to a shortage of ambulance doctors.

Unlike Hong Kong, where trained paramedics provide frontline emergency medical services, mainland cities require most ambulances to carry licensed doctors. In a few ambulances, mostly for transferring patients between hospitals, nurses look after patients.