People's Free Ambulance

WINSTON-SALFM, N.C. (LNS) --Poor residents of Winston-Salem often have to wait indefinitely for an ambulance to arrive no matter how desperately they need one. The local chapter of the Black Panther Party recently announced their plan to provide a "People's Free Ambulance Service" to answer that need.

The deterioration of private and county ambulance service, especially for poor people, has been evident for several years. Until January of 1968, ambulance service in Winston -Salem had been provided by private funeral homes. After that, the funeral homes discontinued the service because it was not profitable, saying that many people did not pay their bills, that equipment requirements were going up, and that it was getting too expensive to operate an ambulance service.

When the private funeral homes discontinued their service, the county took over- at a cost of $20.00 per call. If people didn't have $20.00, or if the county 's ambulance attendants didn't feel that the patients were in great danger or pain, they were not picked up at all, but were left to get to the hospital on their own.

"We in the Black Panther Party say this is not right," a party member said. "All human beings deserve medical attention when they need it. This should be free and sponsored by the government, which can spend billions of dollars to send men to the moon to get a couple of boxes of rocks, but still refuses to give its poor oppressed people free ambulance service and other medical attention."