Sirens blare because ‘this is about life and death, and you’re doing f*** all about it!’

A paramedic’s emotional tirade on TikTok has touched a nerve, racking up almost 750,000 in less than four days.

MedicNix, as she identifies herself on the social media platform, made an open appeal to President Cyril Ramaphosa to acknowledge that load-shedding is not just about electricity but now “about life and death”.

She begins her missive, titled “Cry My Beloved Country”: “Do you know that I was on Sky News last night? But not for a good reason. They wanted to speak to me about the energy crisis in South Africa, and as a paramedic I told them how we get called out to hospitals when the generators stop working to manually ventilate patients to keep them alive.”

Continuing to explain the news story, MedicNix — who describes herself as “sharing my survival stories, towards health and healing” — tells how an elderly woman with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) calls for help every time the power is turned off because her oxygen machine stops working. And how a baby died in an incubator because “the hospital ran out of oxygen and energy”.

“People are dying while your pockets are getting fuller and fuller and fuller and corruption is getting rifer and rifer and rifer, while people — your fellow South Africans — are dying,” MedicNix stated.

She goes on to talk about how emergency service response times are compromised because robots go down, intersections back up and ambulances get caught up in the congestion.

“And we don’t have reception on our phones to call the patient to get a pin location because the towers are down and there’s no connectivity, and and and ...”

She sums this up as “lots of drama, lots of people all affected on a daily basis”.

Her furious rant ends with her declaring: “This is not just about power any more. It’s about life and death and you are doing f*** all about it. That’s all I have to say.”

Efforts by TimesLIVE Premium to speak directly to MedicNix have not been successful.