Author: Justin Suttner

When an ambulance takes hours to arrive, or indeed never arrives at all, the consequences can quite literally be deadly. Recent reporting from across South Africa paints a stark picture: ambulance response times stretching from two to 24 hours in urban and peri-urban areas, and from six to 48 hours in townships and rural communities. For example, in KwaZulu-Natal, where oversight committees have highlighted severe fleet shortages, only a fraction of the province’s ambulances are operational on any given day. Aging vehicles sit in workshops for months, sometimes for basic repairs. Staff shortages and constrained budgets compound the strain. Behind…