I was in the Area 43 MASM
clinic with three family members and a family friend when Paul Mphwiyo staggered into the ward we were in. It was
around 11.30pm on Friday, September 13th.
He was walking by himself, fully clad in his suit. He was holding a heavily bloodied bathing towel to his mouth. At
first I thought the towel was brown in colour,
but I realised it was the blood. A heavy
trail of blood followed him. The nurses were directing him toward a bathroom that passed through the ward. The clinic’s
water supply had stopped a few hours earlier.
Paul was talking, but it was inaudible. His wife
and teenage daughter were following
behind, together with a number of nurses. He went past us, and pushed open the bathroom door. One nurse
instructed him to lie on a bed in the
bathroom area. He was still trying to talk. I heard him say "I'm choking" a number of times. He was
choking on his own blood. He was trying
to cough out what I imagined to be one of the bullets. He was breathing painfully and unnaturally. It was
extremely frightening.
At this point we didn't know who it was, but we
heard the wife making frantic phone
calls. We were able to piece together what she was saying on the phone and
learned that he had been shot. We asked
the daughter who he was, and she told us his name.
I immediately knew who it was, because he
had been actively involved in the debate on whether to devalue the kwacha or not when Bingu was still alive.
I also remembered the news item that
announced he had been appointed as the new
Director of Budget.
We asked the family if the police had been
notified, and they said no. I dialled the
"Ndakuona" number (0800900997). It went unanswered. I tried it
several times, and nobody picked up. The wife
asked for the number so she could also
try it. Still nobody picked up. I then dialled the number of one Officer in Charge of a nearby police
station. It too went unanswered. Several
times. I then dialled the number of a CID officer I know. He answered. It was now exactly midnight. I
explained to him what had happened, and
that the Ndakuona number was not being answered for the entire half hour I was calling. He said he would call me back after
a few minutes to give me other numbers to try. He called back after three minutes.
He gave me numbers for a deputy Officer
in Charge, and a CID head of a nearby police station. I tried both
numbers; one went unanswered, the other was out of reach.
I sent out a tweet describing what had happened,
and asking if there was a police officer on my timeline. I didn't mention the name. I tried Ndakuona yet again, still
no response. Then I tried the two numbers one
more time. The deputy officer in charge
responded, and I gave him the details of the house, which Paul's daughter had given me.
Meanwhile, the nurses had put a call through to
the doctor on call. He came within minutes. It was Dr. Hetherwick Ntaba. He took control of the situation, and managed to stabilise Paul's condition.
He issued instructions to the nurses, and spoke to Paul in a calm,
knowledgeable and authoritative voice. Dr Ntaba told Paul they needed to clear
his air passage so he could breathe normally. Before long Paul stopped making the unnatural sounds. Had Dr Ntaba
arrived half an hour later, I doubt Paul
would still be alive. An ambulance arrived,
and they quickly transported Paul to KCH. Another member of my family had asked Paul's daughter what their
religion was, and she said they were
Catholics. We called a friend in Area 43 and suggested they alert their parish priest. One parishioner drove
to the priest's house and drove him to
KCH. We left the MASM clinic at 1am.
When it was launched with lots of fanfare in 2012, the Ndakuona number was a life saver. On three previous occasions
when I have called the number, there has always been someone on the other end,
taking calls. But the number has also been subjected to abuse. There have been
reports of people calling the number not to report an emergency but to hurl
insults at the police. Some have called the number and have sent police on
false chases. The number fields calls from across the country, which I suspect might cause congestion and delays in sending out alerts to police patrols.
It is probably time to
review the emergency response system for the police, hospitals, and other early
responders. It was unsettling to know that Mphwiyo walked into a hospital that
had no running water at that moment. The frantic scampering of the nurses indicated
they were ill-prepared for that kind of emergency, but it was to their credit
that they did the best they could before the doctor on call arrived.
One police emergency
responder told me that the number is too unwieldy; you need to save it in your
phone as it is ten digits long. Emergency numbers need to be short and easy to
memorise. We have had 990 and 997 before, I am not sure why they were abandoned
and replaced with a ten-digit number. In these days of GPS technology, it is
possible to pin down the specific geo-location of a phone call.
People caught abusing the
system need to face penalties. It may be time to consider ending the open
system of acquiring mobile sim cards without having to register and submit one’s
details. I realise this has implications for freedom of speech and rights to
privacy, but what is the alternative, when the lives of Malawians are in
danger?
