A fitting role model for youngsters
The paramedic offers his services free of charge.
CHILDREN are always talking about what they want to do when they grow up. Occupations like fireman, police officer or secret agent tend to come up most often.
And it always has to do with children having been inspired through a role model. So, perhaps, if that inspiration does stem from a role model, let Charlie McClung be your latest.
Mr McClung enrolled in the army all the way back in 1982 – as a veterinary medic – although he is a paramedic now and offers his rescue services free of charge to all emergency medical rescue services.
“My first patients were not human,” he explained.
Ever since leaving the military, Mr McClung has been working as a full-time paramedic, with one goal in mind – saving people.
Eight years later, in 1990, he responded to a call-out when a little boy had drowned after falling into a swimming pool.
When we arrived he had flat-lined, he said, adding that, at the time, he had just qualified as an advanced life support paramedic.
“While transporting the boy all the way from Mariannhill through to Entabeni Hospital, I was performing CPR constantly for about 15 minutes before we got a heartbeat. By the time we arrived at the hospital, I had a screaming child in my arms,” he said.
Mr McClung added that what made that moment even more special, is that three years earlier, his own son had drowned.
He ran his own medical rescue company in Botswana between 1992 and 1996 before relocating to the Netherlands and working with Holmatro Rescue Equipment for two years before moving back to Botswana in 1999.
He had been providing training in Turkey during that year and had caught a flight back to Botswana. When they landed, he was told he had to go back immediately, as an earthquake had struck.
I had never seen devastation like that in my life, – Charlie McClung
He and the team he had trained himself immediately got to work, trying to save as many as they could. “The last two recorded casualties we found alive were two girls we pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building,” he said.
It was not until two weeks later that he discovered the girls were actually the nieces of the Mayor of Cögelli.
Six months passed and he was back in Turkey on another training programme.
“One of the locals, an elderly lady, came up to me and literally kissed my feet and hugged me,” said Mr McClung.
I asked my colleague why she did this and he told me that she had recognised me and realised I was the man who saved the two girls.
Having moved back to Botswana, Mr McClung continued working with IMART until 2007, when he relocated to the KZN South Coast, where he now offers free emergency medical response services.
“Our main line of function is education in the medical field and, as part of our service – as always – is to provide a rescue support service free of charge to fellow emergency rescue services in the area,” he said.
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