Tonight my sister had an asthma attack and her inhaler ran out. It was late and the nearest open pharmacy was 3km away. Our options were:
- Walk 42 minutes to the pharmacy.
- Wait 40 minutes, walk 10 minutes to the bus station, take the hourly night bus (pray the route isn’t skipped), and walk 15 minutes to the pharmacy.
- Drive 8 minutes.
Fortunately, I have a car, so that was an option. However, tomorrow I won’t sleep at home and my sister doesn’t have a license, and maybe that happens the next time she forgets to refill… We live in Athens the capital of Greece, not a rural area, not a small town, but the fucking capital.
Car dependency sucks.
Edit: While ambulances are an option, no matter how unreliable they may be, having to escalate, when it shouldn’t be necessary, is increasing the load of an already overloaded health care sector.
If my life depends on it I would call an Uber or cab or ask my neighbor.
That doesn’t take away the point that cities should be designed better.
Or call an ambulance. In some places, sure, Uber or a taxi is the right choice because you can’t afford the ambulance, but societies without universal healthcare have deeply fucked priorities.
We have universal health care, though it is severely underfunded, and the government is trying to privatize it.
Deeply fucked priorities it is indeed.
The wait times for ambulances are horrific, last month there were 3 stories of an ambulance arriving more than 2 hours later only to pickup a corpse.