Ambulance crews and paramedics are increasingly being robbed, their vehicles hijacked while they are working, in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime.
Johannesburg, South Africa – “I was looking down to help the patient [when] I saw someone come into the room. I saw the boots, and when I looked up I was staring into a gun.”
It’s a warm October night in Meyerton, south of Johannesburg, and Sonia*, a senior paramedic working for a private ambulance service, is recounting a particularly harrowing day at work in South Africa’s crime-ridden economic capital. She is in her early 40s and does not want to be identified to protect her privacy.
“The guy said to me: “Keep quiet, keep quiet. Go down!” At first Sonia briefly thought he might be a security guard because the emergency call-out was in a wealthy suburban area.
“But then I realised they are busy robbing us and the house. I think they followed us.”
Sonia’s patient, who was suffering from a brain embolism, started screaming. But the gunmen pushed them all to the ground. “I’m thinking ‘What am I going to do?’ Because it’s in me to help a person,” Sonia recounts.
“He had a gun behind me and I’m thinking I must just do what he tells or I’m gonna die,” she continues. Her assailant took her jewellery while screaming threats of: “We’ll shoot you in the stomach! We’ll shoot you in the stomach!”
Facing the ground, Sonia heard a whistle and then a car engine, before looking up to find the attackers gone. Shaken, she rushed to check on her patient. “The patient’s blood pressure now was extremely high and she started having fits,” Sonia says. “But then the police come and the backup comes and everything was OK afterwards.”
She thought she was fine after that, but days later the trauma hit. “Nine days afterward I get post-traumatic shock. I wake up and I’m screaming to my husband: ‘They’re on the roof, they’re on the roof!’ And then I start crying, and I’m crying the whole night,” she says.
Sonia went for counselling to help her recover and is fully back at work now. “I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. I learned to stay focused. You concentrate on the injuries. You start to become like a machine doing one, two, three, four.”
South Africa has the fifth highest crime rate in the world, according to 2024 statistics from the World Population Review, which notes, in particular, its high levels of assault and violent crime. In recent years, first responders and emergency services have reported a growing number of attacks on their staff and vehicles – some ending in injury and even death.
According to Foster Mohale, spokesperson for the National Department of Health, the number of attacks against emergency medical services (EMS) personnel has increased since 2014. “The annual frequency of attacks has varied, with reported instances ranging from 30 to 109,” Mohale said.
