Article about ambulance-drivers in Riad, Saudi-Arabia

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/deutscher-rettungswagenfahrer-in-saudi-arabien-blaulicht-durch-riad-a-956053.html
It's german, but I just had to share.

A german ambulance-driver volunteered to work for the Red Cross in Riad, Saudi-Arabia, for a year. He worked as a paramedic for a hospital. Here just some excerpts:

* Young men in Saudi-Arabia don't have cinemas, bars, concerts or venues to meet women, so their hobby is cars. Cars as in "illegal street-races at night". Combine that with a deeply ingrained indifference to the rules of the road or safety. Riad has several tragic traffic-accidents with multiple deaths each, each weekend-night. Officially, 7000 Saudi-Arabians die each year in traffic-accidents, the real number is much higher.

* He was called to a girls-school, because a girl had collapsed. The security-guard refused to let the paramedics in, because they were men. Half an hour of discussion later somebody carried the girl to the paramedics.

* A pregnant woman was delivering but was having complications. It took some discussion until the paramedic was allowed to watch under woman's abaya. The baby's head was out, but pressed on the umbilical cord and prevented blood-flow. The correct procedure would be to push the baby's head carefully back, but the husband didn't allow the paramedics to touch his wife. "Your child will die! Do you understand?" He didn't care. Treatment had to wait until the woman was in hospital. There, the death of the baby was noted. The husband's reaction: We can make a new one anytime.

* He was called to a private residence. The father had called the ambulance because his 14-year-old daughter was diabetic and had collapsed. When the male paramedics arrived he refused to let them in and insisted on a nurse. Nurses aren't allowed to work outside hospitals in Saudi-Arabia. The paramedics tried to reason with him and finally had him sign a paper that he had sent them away. Some time later, the paramedics were hanging out in front of the hospital when that father rushed into the emergency-room with his dead daughter.

* Foreigners do menial work in Saudi-Arabia in some form of legalized slavery. Deaths by starvation, dehydration or suicide are totally normal.

* Rape of housemaids is an everyday-crime. They can't go to the police, because they would have to prove that it was rape, otherwise the housemaid herself would be charged with extramarital sex.

* The babies of the housemaids are delivered at home and then either abandoned on the steps of a mosque or thrown in a landfill. The hospital (one of several in Riad) where the german paramedic worked cited hundreds of such cases within half a year.

* Some young Saudi-Arabians realize that something is wrong and has to be done, but they are afraid to step forward and demand changes because they would be arrested right away.