In the Ambulansyang de Paa documentary, we witnessed the impact of living in a geographically isolated community with no access to healthcare services. No matter how urgent the care was needed, everyone in the community had to go through the wearisome journey of travelling for 3-4 hours by foot along the mountains of their community. Even manageable conditions like tuberculosis or usually uncomplicated processes like childbirth turn into more complicated cases just because of the delayed care that they receive. Some even die in transit just because of the long duration of transportation and the lack of effective prehospital care. Due to this, families unfortunately bear the burden of treating their conditions with very little knowledge of what should be done.
If planned and coordinated properly, prehospital care can save lives and prevent lifelong disabilities. These are the emergency medical services rendered to a patient to stabilize, resuscitate, and prevent further injury before and during transportation to more equipped health care facilities. The interventions serve as temporizing measures to delay the events that can lead to death, disability or more complications. Another component of prehospital care that should not be compromised is proper patient handling and having a safe a well-equipped means of transportation. This is important especially in injuries that require proper positioning and stabilization to minimize complications (e.g., spinal cord injuries). In the documentary, they only use a duyan to transport the patient. This is quite unsafe especially for trauma patients because it has the risk of making the injury worse. This further highlights the fact that timely and appropriate prehospital care plays a vital role in ensuring that patients, especially those who suffer from acute life-threatening conditions, get their best chance of surviving from their respective diseases and injuries.