Inspector Joe Ibrahim: Paramedic reflects on viral Covid speech

As NSW battled through a second wave of Covid last year, we became immune to the 11am press conferences that dictated our every move — until one paramedic stood up and captured our attention.

Former premier Glays Berejiklian’s 11am press conferences throughout the Covid pandemic became the much-watch TV hour nobody could have predicted — it was where millions tuned in to learn what new restrictions were being rolled out, how long lockdowns would continue and, sadly, how many people had died.

Like clockwork, the then-premier would emerge from the NSW Health building, take off her mask and before speaking a word, reveal whether we were in for a serving of good news or bad simply by the look on her face.

Politicians are renowned for their World Series-worthy poker faces, but during this period of absolute chaos, Ms Berejeklian couldn’t hide the emotion.

So regular and sustained were these daily addresses that the public almost became immune. The messages being delivered by the Ms Berekiklian, Chief Medical Officer Dr Kerry Chant and NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard were dictating, necessarily, how we went about our daily lives, but they were full of numbers — statistics that made it easier to draw a line between us and them. There may have been emotion from those delivering the messages but there was — again probably necessarily — scant detail that helped connect the facts and figures to a human face. Even those who had died were simply described by their age and sex.

An emotional Inspector Joe Ibrahim during his 11am press conferenc. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Damian Shaw

As the second, more dangerous, Delta wave started to cause havoc across the state — and the globe — millions were again thrown into lockdown. Having come out of the first wave relatively unscathed compared to places like the US and countries across Europe, the numbers were now skyrocketing, people were getting really sick and the number of deaths from the virus were reaching terrifying levels.

With people understandably consumed by fear over job losses, keeping vulnerable relatives safe and simply getting out the other side of this disaster, very few realised there was an army of frontline workers who were out there working around the clock dealing with the darkest parts of this pandemic.

Enter NSW Ambulance Inspector Joe Ibrahim.

As those 11am press conferences continued to serve as a war-like dispatch of information each day, they transitioned into having a ‘special guest’ to provide an insight into other parts of the health machine that had been consumed by Covid.

They were often interesting, but more often than not lacked that emotional punch in the guts. That’s no slight on those workers — they were completely exhausted and one thing that was clear was that these people were one hundred per cent committed to getting us through this.

Insp Ibrahim with then-Premier Gladys Berejiklian after the briefing. Picture: Supplied

But when Joe Ibrahim, the popular operational manager with a larger than life personality who years ago gave up a high-paying corporate career to answer a calling to help people, stepped up to the microphone one day in August last year, people immediately took notice.

While the doctors and nurses were rightly getting the recognition for their work treating critically ill patients, ambos were experiencing the worst condions many had ever seen. They were scared. Terrified might be a better word for it. And righly so.

Insp Ibraham, who will be familiar to viewers of the popular NewsCorp documentary The Night Watch, admitted being a paramedic was a career you embarked on knowing dangers lurked on every shift, but until this point in time, they weren’t taking those dangers home.

“For the very first time... I’m now bringing the risk of this contagious virus home to my wife and my beautiful boys,” an emotional Insp Ibrahim said during that press conference.

He described how paramedics were being forced to perform CPR in “unbreathable” and “problematic” PPE including gowns, masks and glasses.

And he told of a family in western Sydney he and his colleagues had been called to where a critically ill single mum lived with her two teenage children. While performing life saving treatment on the mother, the son said something that left them reeling.

”Whilst (working on the mum), her son made a comment to me...‘I think this is my fault, I think I’ve given mum Covid’,” he recalled. “That stopped me in my tracks and it stopped my team in their tracks and it absolutely broke our hearts.”

Insp Ibrahim is well known to viewers of NewsCorp’s The Night Watch. Picture: Richard Dobson

Insp Ibrahim’s raw and emotional address immediately began trending on social media, with people praising his warts and all assessment of their new normal. The story ran in all the major newspapers and it was the top story on the television news bulletins that night.

Nine months later, Insp Ibrahim talks about being called upon to speak for all paramedics and what he wanted to make of his time in spotlight.

“I really wanted them to get a bit of an insight as to what we were doing within ambulance and on the frontline in what was an absolute disaster,” he said. “Call it what you will but for us it was disastrous, it was no different than a catastrophic bushfire.”

He remembers scenes no paramedics had ever been confronted with before.

“We would go in there and see families — six, seven, eight, nine, sometimes even 11 people in a household — all with this horrendous disease and all of who were extremely unwell with it, some of who we would consider critical — critical enough to require intensive care treatment from us.”

Sharing with millions the fear he and his workmates were under was important for Insp Ibrahim and is something he thinks about regularly.

The veteran paramedic talks about the speech that had people talking.

“To see these patients in life-thretening (situations) and then have the worry to bring this life-threatening virus... back to our family. I’ve got two little boys and I’m married and to bring that home, that was the first time in my career that that was actually a problem,” he said.

Walking around Liverpool ambulance station where Insp Ibrahim is now based, it’s obvious to see the kind of respect his colleagues have for him. But when asked about how the paramedics and other NSW Ambulance staff stepped up during the crisis, he is the one full of praise.

“They kept turning up day after day after day to support the community in crisis at their expense and at their family’s expense,” he said. “People say ‘well this is what you signed up for’ but actually it really isn’t. Nobody could have predicted a pandemic like this but the paramedics, the control centre staff and our corporate support staff really stepped up... they stepped up for the community of NSW and they did an extraordinary job.”

Insp Ibrahim knew that day in August he had one chance to get the people of NSW on board. In a flood of issues, his organisation’s was just another.

He didn’t expect the explosion of support and the calls of ‘hero’ by those he’d never even met.

“That was so humbling, that was so flattering," he said. “I got 300 messages - quite literally, without exaggeration - within 10 minutes of making that speech.”

And while he’s glad he had an impact, the modest ambo was quick to share the praise.

“As much as they said I was a hero once I stepped away from the mic, I was purely the face of it and that’s it,” he said. “The speech came from my heart and it came from my heart because I knew that I was the voice for thousands of paramedics and control centre staff. “What I was doing was just showcasing the resilience, showcasing the dedication that our whole team had through the pandemic at the pointy end and personally I think that’s why it spread — it had nothing to do with me, I was just the face of it.”