Why did we add this page covering statistical information ?
The answer is very simple:
In my life experience and especially during the last 15 years that I've been painting these reflective house numbers, I've spoken to numerous south African citizens about what they think of south Africa's health, and crime rate.
- Most replied that it is in a bad state and blame the government for these problems.
- Many also replied that our Emergency services are not doing their job in responding to Emergency call outs.
The truth is that we have very good and trained people manning our Emergency service stations, but even with ALL the training and equipment they have, they also stare crime and road access to many areas in South Africa in the face like ALL of us. To make it even more difficult for them to do their job, some of us don't even bother to put up a proper and highly visible house number and street name to make sure that the emergency services can find us faster, while some people's excuse for not having a visible house number is as they say "Then the criminals can find their house also easier". What a RIDICULOUS excuse ! Criminals can find your house no matter if it's marked or not ! The problem is that when Emergency personnel respond to YOUR emergency call and they have to spend MOST of their time driving around to search for your house where every second wasted is a second closer to your calamity. Sadly only few people realize that Crime and Disease affect ALL of us and that Crime and Disease can only be prevented and healed when ALL of us stand together and fight the good fight. The emergency services have to work, rescue, and help every South African member by being there when they are being called upon while considering the risks they have to take.
Some people have tried to make their homes more visible to the emergency services by putting up these very nice brass metal or plastic numbers outside on their wall or even on their house wall. Unfortunately we also have plants and trees obscuring these numbers we so happily put up. These trees and plats only obscures these efforts of ours and causes these beautiful numbers to NOT be effective enough and cannot be seen by night or sometimes even in day time, And these numbers get broken off and stolen on a daily bases by poverty stricken people and vandalism. So what use is it IF it is there now and gone later or not even visible ?
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Would any of these numbers be visible enough to emergency services by night ? No, definitively not, especially when the Emergency service personnel are in a big hurry to find your house.
I've been looking at a few statistics concerning South Africa's health and safety situation and found some alarming facts on www.nationmaster.com and I'll list them right beneath this paragraph as follows:
With a population of more than 50 million people, there are yearly stats like these as listed below Per 100 000 people.
- Heart attacks:
3216 deaths per year, Ranking 8'th in the world.
- Fire arm homicide:
125,965 deaths per year, ranking No 1 in the world.
- Murders:
- Farm Murders:
Still think that you're safe and don't need to do something about improving your own safety at home ?
I did not provide this information to scare or alarm you, but to shed light upon ignorance.
You can also read articles on: http://arrivealive.co.za/
