Justinian Tan (right) and his group of four friends were giving Joshua De Rozario a final get-together in Johor Baru last Friday (Aug 25) before he returns to Perth for his studies. Tan was hit by a car that night and died of injuries on Wednesday. — Picture via Facebook/Joshua De Rozario

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 1 — A friend of a Singaporean man killed in a hit-and-run admitted today that problems in getting the victim treatment at a Johor Baru hospital could have been a miscommunication due to language issues.

Joshua De Rozario, one of the five friends of 25-year-old Justinian Tan who had all gone to Johor Baru together for supper on August 25 when Tan was hit by a car, told Singapore’s Straits Times that Tan was treated “straightaway” at the Hospital Sultan Aminah (HSA).

But according to De Rozario, the general hospital’s staff were speaking Malay while he and his friends were speaking English, leading to “difficulties communicating”.

“At that point of time, what I heard was that we had to pay and in cash — it couldn’t be in card. We didn’t have a large sum of money on us and we had to run around finding an ATM. From our point of view then, it felt like we had to pay first,” he was quoted saying.

“Nothing was really communicated properly so it could have been a miscommunication. We didn’t even know where he was at the time, but after we paid they told us to go to the red zone.

“Truth be told, I don’t know and I can’t comment on whether the hospital did all they could. I’m not medically trained and we had communication problems because we did not speak much Malay. So we thought it was better to bring him back. Perhaps there were things lost in translation,” the Singaporean added.

De Rozario also reportedly said the wait for an ambulance “felt really long” and he thought it took 30 minutes, after Malaysia’s Health Ministry said today that an ambulance left HSA two minutes after the call for help was made, arrived at the scene within 11 minutes, and departed with the patient in five minutes.

“There were quite a lot of people there and someone else called the ambulance. We were in a distressed situation and didn’t know what to do. In that situation, I didn’t have a sense of the time and it did feel like 30 minutes,” De Rozario was quoted as saying.

Malaysia’s Health Ministry refuted earlier today allegations reported in Singaporean media that HSA had demanded a deposit before treating Tan.

The Straits Times reported that Tan was at HSA for about five hours before he was transferred to Singapore General Hospital and died on August 30 when he was taken off life support.