Pretoria — Fifty medical vehicles have been distributed to health service points in four districts of the North West to boost health care service delivery.
The North West Department of Health on Tuesday said this is in response to the increasing demand for emergency medical vehicles in the province.
Department MEC Dr Magome Masike recently officiated the distribution at the North West Emergency Medical Rescue Service (EMRS) College, in Orkney.
“I am distributing these vehicles to our various facilities to go and immediately boost health care service delivery in our service points in the districts.
“There are 20 ambulances and 30 patient transporters made up of 20 (14 seaters) and ten (22 seater) vehicles. This makes it a total of 50 red fleet vehicles we are dispatching to service our people,” said MEC Masike.
This advancement comes just a few days after 33 Emergency Care Technicians graduated at the Department’s EMRS College.
“Just on the 6th of this month I addressed graduates in this EMRS College about the need to be responsible around these scarce resources. I warned them about the fact that a lot of complaints we receive lately are related to Emergency Medical services, mainly about the ambulances, that they arrive late, they are misused and so on,” said the MEC.
He said there are suspicions among stakeholders that some of the cases of medical negligence are associated with negligent ambulance drivers.
“We are concerned that our ambulances spent more time in garages being serviced and repaired when they are supposed to be attending to emergencies on the road.
“We believe that the poor road infrastructure in the province, particularly in rural areas, is a mayor contributing fact. We also believe that misuse of these vehicles does contribute. It is therefore the responsibility for all of us to monitor and report misuse of these vehicles,” he said.
Source : http://allafrica.com/