In Mexico City, the government operates fewer than 45 emergency clinics for a population of 9 million people. It has created an underground industry of private, for-profit ambulances, often operated by people with little or no training or certification. This is also how the Ochoas family spends their nights in their self-made ambulance with access to an emergency radio. The patients requiring treatment are also victims of the system: those who can´t pay remain lying on the side of the road until – if at all – an official ambulance happens to come along the way.