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When Ron Adhipurna’s brother Andy, who lived close to a hospital, died of a heart attack after it took the ambulance almost an hour to get to his house, Ron decided enough was enough.
He wasn’t going to let fellow Jakartans die while the government struggled to put together an emergency medical service. So he established Medic One Indonesia, an internationally accredited local service not unlike 911 in the United States.

What made you want to get into the business of saving lives?

My brother died of a heart attack when he was just 28. His daughter was only 5 months old. He lived about seven minutes away from the nearest hospital, yet it took the hospital 48 minutes to get to him.

What happens if I call the government’s emergency service at 118? Do I get anything?

You do once in awhile if you’re lucky, but you won’t usually get a response. And if you do, you have no guarantee that an emergency team will be dispatched to you. In Malaysia, response time is only about 15 minutes. In Tokyo, it’s only four minutes. If you live in Los Angeles, it’s nine to 11 minutes, and in Singapore it’s seven to eight minutes. Jakarta …

And how about yourself then? What services do you offer?

We’re a private medical group specializing in pre- and post-hospital care services. Our goal, however, is to keep you from needing to get into a hospital in the first place.

If you’re a member and you call us, your preregistered number will trigger your personal details and medical records and the paramedical operator will know exactly where you live. We conduct site surveys so we know the quickest route to your house. And we assign a primary care internist — not a GP — to you. We also teach first aid to the person closest to you, even your driver.

You teach first aid to drivers, too?

Yes, why not? And secretaries and other employees who work in close proximity to you, because it’s vital that you receive first aid as quickly as possible.

How many ambulances do you have?

We have three accredited Life Support Ambulances in Jakarta and the support of more than 300 designated ambulances nationwide belonging to our partner hospitals.

Within metropolitan Jakarta, our response time is 16 to 21 minutes, but we constantly drill our teams to shorten those times.

Are you guys working with the city of Jakarta to help improve the quality of emergency services here?

Pak Governor Fauzi Bowo invited us to be part of his team to build a “911” system for the city. But before it can be implemented, we first need to equip the city’s first responders with the professional skills to save lives.

We will be starting with the city’s fire brigade. All the firemen know now, sorry to say, is how to put out fires. They do not know how to safely carry a fire victim, treat burns or conduct safe and quick victim extrication from a multivehicle accident. I hope to see things really shape up within the next three to four years. Jakarta has the good fortune of having a visionary governor.

What’s the Save-a-Life team?

Wouldn’t you want to be living in a Jakarta where people don’t panic or stand still in fright, but rather know exactly what they need to do when confronted with a medical situation requiring first aid? Remember what happened to the expat at the Marriott? He died not because of the bomb, but because no one, not even the police, knew how to stop the bleeding! He was just there at the curb being filmed by journalists but no one came to help until 40 minutes later! The bleeding was so severe that when he arrived at the hospital it was too late.

The Save-a-Life Team, or SALT, is a medical reserve corps consisting of well-trained volunteer first-aiders to provide immediate aid or extra help in support of the city’s first responders. Initially, we will train teachers and schoolchildren. In turn, they will safeguard their schools and some hopefully will become our “ambassadors” and pass on their lifesaving skills to the community. The aim is to recruit 5,000 SALT first-aiders by 2011.

Do you conduct free clinics to certify students and teachers from around Jakarta?

We hold two free classes a month. There’s a schedule on our Web site [http://www.medic-one.org/]. You can become a certified CPR Lifesaver in only two and a half hours. Alternatively, you can become a certified first-aider in eight hours, that way you can help people who are choking, experiencing a heart attack, who have been poisoned, or help someone who is bleeding.

I can’t remember, is it still 10 chest compressions and two breaths?

It’s 30 compressions and two breaths. This is set every five years by a group called ILCOR — the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation. ILCOR includes seven international resuscitation organizations and one of them is the American Heart Association. The next set of guidelines will be released this year.

Ron Adhipurna was talking to Zack Petersen.