An ambulance crew belonging to the St John Ambulance was attacked in the early hours of Thursday morning by a group of anti-vax protesters in Lae.
The crew consisting of three ambulance officers were attending to a female patient along the Boinamo Gravel Road in Lae when they were attacked by the group.
The group were under the assumption that the crew was giving vaccine jabs to the people.
The crew members were verbally abused and accused of conducting vaccinations and threatened to have the ambulance smashed for being suspected of carrying out vaccination in the communities.
It so happened that while two ambulance officers were attending to the patient, the other officer including the patient’s husband stepped out to try and appease the angry protestors by explaining to them what was actually happening.
Both the officer and the husband were assuring the crowd that they were not the vaccination team and that they were only attending to an emergency case in the area.
“This is now the second incident that the ambulance officers in Lae have had to come across within the space of two weeks,” said CEO of St John Ambulance Matt Cannon.
A similar incident had taken place last week when a crew was attending to a case which the police are still trying to investigate and resolve.
“Scepticism and misinformation floating around is that the public assumption now is that St John Ambulance is involved in a vaccine roll out when that is clearly not the case.”
“Under this pretext, the work life of our ambulance officers is at high risk of getting attacked under these threats from these anti-vax groups and protesters.”
“It is an on-going issue where assumptions are made by these protesters that the St John Ambulance officers attending to emergency cases are seemingly seen to be roll out vaccinations,” Mr Cannon said.
St John Ambulance in Lae have assured that they are not running any vaccination rollouts in any community and that the Ambulance teams are there to help people in Lae in times of emergencies.
“Being abused or assaulted by those whom we are trying to help is really unacceptable and does not help us do our job.”
“We call on the Lae community to be respectful toward our ambulance officers during this time as so much more people are in need of our help,” Mr Canon said.