It’s an ill-kept secret that China is full of various counterfeits and bootlegs. The truth of it seems harmless enough when it’s limited to Hollywood films but recently the existence of phony ambulances has been brought to light by Beijing’s Morning Post. Apparently, China’s emergency medical transport system has been dispatching ill-suited medical vans and pulling in quite a profit doing so. The story came to light thanks to a man named Lin, living in the city of Wenzhou. His wife had contracted a serious illness and was admitted into the intensive care unit of their local hospital, where she stayed for 40 days. It was then decided that she should be transferred to another hospital in Hangzhou, approximately 250 miles away.
A short time after departing the hospital, Lin’s wife was struggling to breathe. Within minutes she was coughing up blood. The ambulance was forced to return to the original hospital, and the patient was returned to the ICU. By the following day she was still in a critical condition. Lin was certain to contact the authorities about this suspicious, so-called ambulance. Surprisingly, the ambulance was legitimately registered with the government and belonged to a certain privately owned hospital. However, it was only certified to carry patients with non-life-threatening external wounds. |
