The Western Cape Government (WCG) has launched two new videos focusing on the vital role its emergency medical staff (EMS) play on a daily basis.

Dispatched to administer emergency medical treatment to ordinary citizens who are injured – either accidentally or in an attack – and facing death, the EMS save countless lives each year. And yet they are often prevented from doing so.

Head of emergency medical services, Dr Shaheem de Vries, said: “EMS staff are faced with very difficult decisions every day – life and death decisions. For many in the emergency services, some of the bravest and most courageous of these decisions is also the one they make the most often. That is, the decision to come to work.

“This is as a consequence of what has become a daily threat to EMS providers who may, when responding to a call, be stabbed or shot at by criminals intending to rob them of any valuables they possess. It’s hard enough to deal with knowing that your decisions can make the difference between life and death, but to know that you have to make these decisions in a situation where you yourself could be at risk is virtually untenable.

“The EMS staff are incredibly brave people, and we and the citizens they serve, want to acknowledge and thank them.”

Created by FCB Cape Town, the videos are the latest in a series intended to influence behaviour.

“The injured person and the attackers are from the same community, which means that an attack on an EMS, is an attack on that community. We hope that – by telling the stories of real survivors – the perpetrators of the attacks, as well as the community at large, will come to understand that, when they attack the EMS, they are attacking their mother, their father, their brother or sister, daughter or son,” said FCB Cape Town chief creative officer, Mike Barnwell.