Expat Health Services in Malaysia

This article is to illustrate what would happen if you had the misfortune of being involved in a motor vehicle accident (MVA). If your are crossing the road and someone knocks you down, the chances are that some passer by will try and stop a car or more often a cab, pick you up and put you in the back of the taxi, broken neck and all and rush you to the nearest public hospital, where the good Samaritan will pull you out of his vehicle and put you on a trolley of the Accident and Emergency Room. It is also most likely that this would also happen if you are driving or just about doing anything and get involved in a MVA.

This is a very peculiar practice in Malaysia and if you are an expatriate you will also be most likely be subjected to this practice especially if you are unconscious and alone.

The good Samaritan who transport you to the hospital means well but is usually untrained in first aid and in transport of injured persons resulting in either loss of precious time whereby CPR or other measures may be needed to stabilize a injured person or the worsening of certain injuries like fracture of neck bones or ribs.

Occasionally someone may call an ambulance which has a paramedic who is usually a trained person. However the response time and the traffic congestion may actually become a disadvantage as there are no special provisions for ambulance to have priority lanes or right of way.

If the injured person is unconscious and arrives at an emergency room, the medical personal may have difficulty in establishing the identity of the person and treatment would usually be started even before the next of kin are informed. Eventually, however when they are informed it may be difficulty to transfer the person to another facility of the next of kin's choice, because a procedure may have already been done and transporting a patient can be a problem at that time.

This peculiar practice in Malaysia is the same in urban areas or even on rural roads but in larger cities this practices is almost certainly the norm.

Added to all the above problems sometimes your wallet or other valuables may also be lost resulting in further delays in establishing a person's identity and informing the next of kin.

Usually once you are in an accident and emergency room, (which is usually what the ER is called here) you will be attended by doctors and referred to the specialist whom the admitting doctor feels you should be attended to (for example, if you have head injury you would then be referred to a Neurosurgeon).

Unlike many countries if somebody calls '911' or 999 in this country depending on what you describe during the call and the nature of the emergency a police patrol car will be dispatched. They will then call the ambulance which when arrives at the site may need to call for a rescue squad which is usually the fire department who have equipment and expertise in getting to or extricating a victim from a wreckage, which is time consuming but sometimes a good Samaritan does not materialize, so in such circumstances, the police would do.

So lets say you are a victim of a MVA, unconscious, with multiple fractures and to your misfortune your wallet and all other identification documents are lost.... what do you do or what does your next of kin do.

In the next article we will discuss some options for one to put into place before anyone is confronted with a situation as mentioned above.