KEVON FELMINE

As the COVID-19 in­fec­tion rate con­tin­ues to soar, the na­tion­al am­bu­lance ser­vice re­mains bur­dened with emer­gency calls, av­er­ag­ing 200 per day.

Paul An­der­son, CEO of Glob­al Med­ical Re­sponse (GM­RTT), said re­quests for emer­gency am­bu­lance ser­vices re­mains con­sis­tent as the pre­vi­ous month.

GM­RTT pro­vides emer­gency med­ical and trans­porta­tion ser­vices on be­half of the Min­istry of Health us­ing a com­bi­na­tion of sta­tion-based and rov­ing am­bu­lance de­ploy­ment strate­gies. 

Mean­while, Uni­ver­sal Am­bu­lance Ser­vices, a pri­vate com­pa­ny, con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence an in­crease in COVID-19 pa­tients re­quest­ing their ser­vices. CEO Sha­biel Khan says that in the past week, they re­ceived an av­er­age of 25 calls per day from fam­i­lies re­quest­ing trans­porta­tion for COVID-19 pa­tients from their homes to hos­pi­tals.

Khan said peo­ple are al­so rent­ing the com­pa­ny’s oxy­gen con­cen­tra­tors for home care. 

Uni­ver­sal’s en­try in­to the COVID-19 mar­ket came as in­fect­ed pa­tients com­plained that when they re­quest an am­bu­lance, it ei­ther take hours to ar­rive and does not show up at all.

Fam­i­lies who can af­ford are will­ing to pay their own cost to trans­port their COVID-19 rel­a­tives to hos­pi­tals. Fam­i­lies are al­so re­quest­ing pri­vate am­bu­lances for non-COVID-19 emer­gen­cies.

One re­cent is­sue came around 3 am on Mon­day when Chris­tine Sum­rah went in­to labour at a rel­a­tive’s home in Point Fortin. When her fam­i­ly con­tact­ed an am­bu­lance to take her to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, the dis­patch­er in­formed them that none were avail­able.

Se­cu­ri­ty at the Point Fortin Hos­pi­tal de­nied Sum­rah en­try as the Min­istry of Health re­cent­ly con­vert­ed it to a COVID-19 treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty.

Sum­rah even­tu­al­ly gave birth on the road­side in Ota­heite. Dur­ing Wednes­day’s Min­istry of Health COVID-19 up­date, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram said the GM­RTT am­bu­lance was en route while the birth took place. Paras­ram said he could speak on the ca­pac­i­ty of GM­RTT.

An­der­son told Guardian Me­dia that GM­RTT has 48 am­bu­lances, but fol­low­ing prop­er fleet man­age­ment, all are nev­er in op­er­a­tion at the same time. He said am­bu­lances al­so have to un­der­go main­te­nance. There­fore, a third of the fleet is usu­al­ly in re­serve.

“We do not overuse the am­bu­lances. We do not com­pro­mise rou­tine re­pairs and pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance,” An­der­son said.

De­spite ex­per­i­ment­ing with dif­fer­ent op­er­a­tional prac­tices, GM­RTT does not have a ded­i­cat­ed fleet to deal with COVID-19. An­der­son said all am­bu­lances could han­dle COVID-19 cas­es, and the com­pa­ny has a ro­bust clean­ing and de­con­t­a­m­i­na­tion process af­ter pro­vid­ing ser­vices to COVID-19 pa­tients. “It is over­whelm­ing, but we are not over­whelmed. I must say the staff has risen to the oc­ca­sion. It is prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing they have faced in their ca­reers.”

De­spite be­ing on the COVID-19 front­line for the past 16 months, An­der­son said his staff, al­though tired and frus­trat­ed, re­mains in good spir­its.

“I am proud of how they have risen to the chal­lenge at this time.”