My first experience with a Vietnamese ambulance team

The good news is that the ambulance was not for me. I just happened to be at a friend's place when his extremely pregnant wife started to go into labor. She was fine and is fine now, so there is nothing to be alarmed about. They had been preparing for this moment for a while now and everything turned out great. It was just kind of surprising how basic the medical team's equipment was.

As a westerner, I am accustomed to ambulances being some sort of almost military looking vehicle with dual tires on the back and what appears to be reinforced siding for, i don't know, I guess bad neighborhoods where they might come under machine gun fire.

Here in Vietnam and from what I hear the rest of this part of the world, the ambulances are simply modified minivans and that is exactly what this vehicle seemed like.

While the team was inside helping the wife to get out of the building I took a chance to have a gander inside the vehicle and I wasn't surprised to see that it was rather basic. This is more like a spacious way to travel rather than a life-saving vehicle. I was also told by the Vietnamese speaking people in attendance that the two-person team that arrived knew almost nothing about medical care, so that wasn't a good start. They had dungarees on and looked the part but aside from basic first aid I don't think these guys really know a whole hell of a lot about saving anyone's life.

I guess the only advantage is that people actually do get out of the way of vehicles with sirens and flashing lights on them here because there are rather severe penalties for not doing so.

The interior didn't instill me with a great deal of confidence either because outside of 30 or so bottles of water I didn't notice much in the way of medical equipment. That lie-down area also looks extremely uncomfortable and there was no sort of advanced gurney either. I suppose it wouldn't matter much though because all of the buildings I have been in inside of this country the elevators are too small to accommodate one and the stairwells all bend at angles that would make it impossible to get one of them up and down them anyway.

The wife walked out on her own accord and then lied down in the ambulance and they took off for the hospital.

She is a very tough lady and has had 2 children before so I don't think that even she was all that concerned about it so I guess they know exactly what they needed to bring with them and this was basically just an Uber that doesn't have to obey and traffic laws. Given the environment that we are in and the plethora of hospitals that exist in Da Nang, this is probably sufficient anyways.