52 Tower Transit buses to be equipped with AEDs

While driving bus service 143 along Teban Gardens on Sept 5, 2023, Tower Transit bus captain Shanmugam Ramasamy noticed something was amiss when a regular passenger did not press the bell before his usual stop.

- Claudia Tan

Left: Mr Goh Pei Ming, Minister of State for Home Affairs and Social and Family Development, pasting an AED On Board decal on a Tower Transit bus. Above: The device aboard a bus.

(PHOTOS: AZMI ATHNI, SCDF)

Mr Shanmugam checked his mirror and saw that the elderly man was unconscious, with his head tilted backwards.

Realising that the man had had a cardiac arrest, Mr Shanmugam asked another regular passenger who works as a nurse for help. They pulled the elderly man out of the bus and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on him for about 15 minutes.

Despite their best efforts, they were unable to save the man.

Recalling being shaken by the man’s death, Mr Shanmugam said: “I would see him three times a week, and he was a very jovial man who always wore a batik shirt. I often spoke to him whenever I helped him board the bus. We also shared the same birthday.”

To prevent such incidents from happening in the future, the Singapore Civil Defence Force and Tower Transit launched the AED-on-Buses programme at Bulim Bus Depot in Jurong West on Oct 28.