One Optimistic Dane
A small feature in the local news caught my attention: Dane looks to establish private ambulance service in Turkey:
Marc Alex Ib Uhrenholt, who has successfully established Falck, a Danish emergency and healthcare company, in Slovakia, Norway and Belgium, is currently taking the first steps at setting up the firm in Turkey. As well as teaching himself Turkish and soaking up the historical and cultural Turkish traditions, he offers an insightful look into the state of emergency and medical services in the country ...
... He said the challenge for the Istanbul municipality was improving the infrastructure of the city in order to reduce stress and pollution and to avoid the waste of human resources as people sat through endless hours of traffic.
“Managing the city’s infrastructure and seeking green solutions is an issue that should concern people. For example, further investments on the Bosphorus Sea transport, ethanol or electric-driven buses, and more metro lines could help take some of the pressure off the city in terms of the traffic and pollution,” Uhrenholt said.
Two reactions. First: I believe in the almost infinite power of free markets and investment. If anything can improve Istanbul's state of readiness for an emergency, it will be the growth of the middle class and people like this nice Dane. Go, nice Dane!
Second: Yeah, yeah. Bet you anything in five years' time he'll be medicated, chain-smoking, drunk as a keg of beer and gibbering madly at bootleg Lawrence of Arabia videos.
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Dec '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
"... ethanol or electric-driven buses, and more metro lines could help take some of the pressure off the city in terms of the traffic and pollution,"
Now thay Ozone Al Gore has admitted that his support for ethanol was a craven ploy for votes, perhaps he should inform the rest of the world.
Dec '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
As my internal combustion engines professor, the late Dr. Louis Boehman used to say, “Alcohol should be put into engineers, not engines.”
Aug '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
I am seriously wondering... If traffic in Istanbul is really as bad as the article portrays it, is our non-melancholy Dane looking to establish airlift ambulance services? Or is traffic still not so bad to justify the expense of helicopters for emergency service?
I guess I share the same doubts as the lone commenter on the article: "Those ambulances better have wings..."
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Midget Faded Rattlesnake: I am seriously wondering... If traffic in Istanbul is really as bad as the article portrays it, is our non-melancholy Dane looking to establish airlift ambulance services? Or is traffic still not so bad to justify the expense of helicopters for emergency service?
I guess I share the same doubts as the lone commenter on the article: "Those ambulances better have wings..." · Dec 19 at 8:35am
It's really that bad. There's been a small improvement in civic-mindedness since I arrived; it used to be that drivers didn't even pull over when ambulances were trying to pass. Now they sometimes do. But it also seems to me that traffic is easily 20-30 percent more dense than it was five years ago, too.
Re: One Optimistic Dane
But helicopter ambulance services are an excellent idea. I've never seen one, but that doesn't mean it couldn't work.
Jul '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Claire: In a land where baksheesh is a way of life, how is good traffic flow possible, let alone modernity? Doesn't corruption get baked into the DNA after a millennium or so, or am I being unjust to what's left of the Ottoman empire??
Aug '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Hmmm... I smell another crusade for civic-minded Claire here.
Mind you, given how infrequently airlifts are done even in wealthy, impatient America -- even in those parts of America where road service is difficult or impossible -- my impression is that the costs of helicopter medical service are... not negligible.
But if anyone could figure out whether it's possible, it's you, right? Between time spent advocating for earthquake-preparedness and against animal rape... gotta keep busy somehow, eh?
Wonder whether the Optimistic Dane has given air service any thought himself, or whether he's strictly a road kind of guy.
Jun '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Yes, this guy has a heck of a business plan. All he has to do is completely change the culture, government, infrastructure, and pollution, and then his ambulance service will really take off.
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Is there a lot of urban helicopter ambulance service anywhere? I see it all the time here—I live about a quarter mile from a hospital that's a regional trauma center. But I live near lots of wide-open space where it's easy to set a helicopter down. I'd imagine it'd be nigh-impossible to land a copter in most densely-populated neighborhoods.
Maybe the trick would be to build a bunch of neighborhood pads so that you can have a traditional ambulance or gurney get people to the pads, then the copter from there to the hospital. Seems unlikely…
Good luck to the Dane. And Claire, if you want to score an interview, work on your pronunciation of rødgrød med fløde.
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Modernity? Those aren't horses clogging the roads. Interestingly, the biggest obstacle to building public transportation has nothing to do with corruption: It's archeology. Every single time they try to dig to build the metro, they find another priceless archeological trove. They began construction of an ultra-high-tech, four-billion dollar subway tunnel beneath the Bosphorus. But the plans encountered a snag, to say the least, when engineers made an astonishing discovery: the near-mythical lost Byzantine port of Theodosius. Seriously. The digging for the tunnel was halted—entailing untold millions in economic losses—and the digging for the remains began. An army of archeologists descended upon the pit, working round the clock to preserve the ancient jetties and docks. Meanwhile, Istanbul’s traffic grew yet more snarled.
Aug '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Stupid of me not to think of this earlier, but ZAKA uses motorcycles for emergency field medicine in Israel: http://www.zaka.us/show.asp?PID=17
If you can't get the patients to the hospital in a timely fashion, you can at least bring a little bit of hospital to them in the mean time, and everyone knows motorcycles have an advantage over cars in snarled-up traffic.
Given the ambition and drive of a lot of young EMTs, doctors, and so on, I imagine there'd be plenty who'd find the idea of tooling around in a motorcycle gang to deliver their medical ministrations... rather dashing, really.
How do you feel about an Istanbul Motorcycle Medical Squad? Or have you already got one of those.
Edited on Dec 19, 2010 at 11:51amRe: One Optimistic Dane
The thing is--I wouldn't totally bet against him. There are a lot of wealthy people here--and they want things like good hospitals. There are some outstanding private hospitals here. Could his business succeed? Sure, in principle. Something about his tone suggested he might be a bit naive about how different a business environment this is from Denmark's ... but for someone who's not, it's not a bad idea at all.
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Midget Faded Rattlesnake: Stupid of me not to think of this earlier, but ZAKA uses motorcycles for emergency field medicine in Israel: http://www.zaka.us/show.asp?PID=17
If you can't get the patients to the hospital in a timely fashion, you can at least bring a little bit of hospital to them in the mean time, and everyone knows motorcycles have an advantage over cars in snarled-up traffic.
Given the ambition and drive of a lot of young EMTs, doctors, and so on, I imagine there'd be plenty who'd find the idea of tooling around in a motorcycle gang to deliver their medical ministrations... rather dashing, really.
How do you feel about an Istanbul Motorcycle Medical Squad? Or have you already got one of those. · Dec 19 at 11:26am
Edited on Dec 19 at 11:51 am
That seems like a really good idea to me. I've never seen that. Mind you, such a squad would probably need its own services very quickly.
Jun '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
The naiveté was what inspired my comment the most, however, he may want to bite off smaller chunks first. In Russia, I saw many dreaming foreigners get smacked and run out of town. Still, there is huge growth in quality health clinics throughout Russia. In Nizhny-Novgorod, there was a high-end clinic that, of course, catered to the better off. They had every modern gizmo available. These were not foreign-led, though. Often, the locals can navigate through the maze of obstacles far better than an outsider.
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
The thing is--I wouldn't totally bet against him. There are a lot of wealthy people here--and they want things like good hospitals. There are some outstanding private hospitals here. Could his business succeed? Sure, in principle. Something about his tone suggested he might be a bit naive about how different a business environment this is from Denmark's ... but for someone who's not, it's not a bad idea at all. ·
Jun '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
As a digression, Claire, I'm curious if you experience the same thing I did in Russia and Ukraine. Wherever I went, I was quickly identified as a foreigner, obviously, and health clinics, pharmacies, hair salons, etc. would bend over backwards for me. The minute I walked in the door, they knew who I was, what I wanted, and frequently sought out anyone who knew English to assist me.(my Russian was passable but I never mastered describing health-related problems) Does that happen to you?
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Absolutely, to the point of it being embarrassing when I'm visibly treated better than Turkish friends who are with me.
Aug '10
Re: One Optimistic Dane
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
That seems like a really good idea to me. I've never seen that. Mind you, such a squad would probably need its own services very quickly. · Dec 19 at 12:22pm
It's one of the hazards of the profession, I gather. At least the equipment will be handy.
London and Miami have lately developed motorcycle rescue squads. Heck, London even has bicycle response units -- don't know if that's a green initiative or if the bicyclists manage to get places even motorcycles can't go.