De Guang Chen keeps a Chinese-English medical emergency card in his wallet as well as in a medicine vial in his refrigerator.

From the cards, a paramedic or other emergency medical provider can quickly ascertain not just the names and phone numbers of his primary physician and emergency contact person, but also determine his blood type, the status of his health insurance, his medical conditions and the types of medications he takes.

Chen, 75, has been fortunate enough not to have had a medical emergency since filling out the card four years ago, but he said it provides a sense of security for him, both when he's in his apartment and when he's out and about in his Chinatown neighborhood.

"Everyone should have one," Chen said, in Cantonese.

Chen is one of up to 2,000 Chinese-speaking elders in Hawai'i who have obtained the cards from Yuk Pang Law, who heads Hawaii Immigrant Services and has been an advocate for the Chinese community the past several decades.

Law said she has printed the cards and other materials with her own money and distributed them free of charge for more than a decade. During that time, Law has heard from one person — a woman who said the card gave vital information to medical workers after she got dizzy and fainted — but she believes it has helped many others during emergencies.

Law hopes the program will be adopted by other organizations that cater to immigrants, seniors or other disadvantaged people as a relatively low-cost, life-saving measure for their clients.

"I think for emergency help, all of this information is very important, especially whenever a person is ill and not able to speak for himself or herself," Law said.

The cards are especially helpful for immigrants or others for whom English is not their first language, she said. In emergencies, they can quickly pull out a card.

Patty Dukes, the city's chief of emergency medical services, said paramedics encourage all emergency card programs.

"It makes it easier for us to be able to take the information with us to the physicians and nurses at the hospital," she said.

The "Vial of Life" program doesn't cost much money, Law said. Expenditures will depend on how cheaply a group can print the medical information cards, stickers to identify the Vial of Life and refrigerator magnets alerting the paramedics and other care providers.

Law said she had her first cards and stickers printed up in Hong Kong, but now has the capability to print them here, although she has yet to find a magnet company that can get her a good quote.

All it would take for an ethnic organization that wanted to come up with its own cards is to replicate the form on her materials and then translate the information into its own respective languages, Law said.

Senior centers, social clubs, churches and other civic organizations could also reproduce the cards for their members, she said.

Dukes said paramedics know to look for emergency information cards on patients who are incapable of speaking for themselves.

She said she recalls the Vial of Life program from earlier years. She recalls that the idea of keeping information in the refrigerator was tied to the necessity for insulin to be kept cold, which is no longer the case.

"If the Vial of Life is still an active program, let us know that it's alive and we'd make sure our paramedics were refreshed on it also," Dukes said. "I don't think it's been very prominent lately."

Another good practice is to place medical information and vials of your medicine in your medicine cabinets, Dukes said. "Part of our job is to hunt that out," she said.

Other healthcare providers said they encourage expanded use of both the medical emergency cards and the Vial of Life program.

At Straub Clinics and Hospital, where Law said she first saw emergency cards and the Vial of Life more than a decade ago, primary-care doctors still provide their patients with medical identification cards similar to the ones distributed by Law, said Claire Tong, a Straub spokeswoman.

Ready access to a list of medications taken is important, Tong said.

Rich Meiers, president and chief executive officer of the Healthcare Association of Hawai'i, which represents all hospitals and other health-related facilities in the state, said his organization supports any program that provides information for care providers.

"Anytime we can do anything to erase any doubts of medical errors or anything like that, we're going to do it," Meiers said.

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com.