[Anchor]
Starting next April, newly introduced ambulances must secure about 70 centimeters of clearance at the patient's head. However, with just half a year left before implementation, it has been confirmed that the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the responsible government department, has requested the National Assembly to "defer the implementation of the law for three years."
Reporter Bae Seong-jae has the story.
[Reporter]
The 119 ambulances currently operated as the mainstay in frontline fire stations are modified from Staria vehicles.
This is the inside of an ambulance.
As you can see, there is no space for a person to fit between the partition separating the driver's cabin and the patient compartment, and the temporary bed.
Consequently, the workspace available for emergency medical technicians is inevitably narrow.
With the Emergency Medical Service Act amended in April of last year to address these problems, ambulances registered starting April 2 of next year must secure an emergency treatment space of at least 70 centimeters from the partition to the temporary bed.
However, as current Staria ambulances cannot meet this standard, the issue surfaced when the discontinuation of the Solati—the only domestic vehicle capable of meeting the revised specifications—was confirmed for August of next year.
Although the National Fire Agency even reviewed alternatives such as modifying two types of domestic pickup trucks, safety concerns erupted among emergency medical technicians this time.
According to SBS reporting, the Ministry of Health and Welfare ultimately made an official request to the National Assembly at the end of last month to defer the implementation of the law until 2030, prior to which an interagency meeting for the supply and demand of new ambulances was held only once.
[Baek Sun-hee / Member of the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee (Rebuilding Korea Party): Trying to postpone the implementation of the law first is sluggish administration and a clear evasion of responsibility by the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Effective supply measures must be promptly established.]
In response, the Ministry of Health and Welfare stated that it will find all possible ways to replace discontinued vehicles, such as imported vehicles, during the grace period.
Cuts to the National Fire Agency's budget, which applied for an additional 5.8 billion won—up more than 40 million won per vehicle compared to the previous year—to introduce new ambulances next year, also appear inevitable.
With public health center ambulances across the country also needing to replace 73 vehicles by the year after next, concerns over the prolonged operation of aging vehicles are growing further.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
(Video reporting: Shin Dong-hwan, Choi Dae-woong | Video editing: Kim Yoon-sung)
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