New ambulance operations centre

By LULU MARK
Health and HIV/AIDS Minister Dr Lino Tom opened the new national ambulance operations centre at the St John Ambulance headquarters in Port Moresby on Monday.
Dr Tom said well-coordinated ambulance services would enable easy access to healthcare by the people especially in a country where the bulk of the population were based in rural areas. “With so many health priorities it is easy for the importance of ambulance services to be lost and it is easy not to see the benefits of a well-coordinated and easily accessible services,” he said.
“As we move towards the government’s call of having healthcare less than one hour, coordinating ambulances will feature as one of the main institutes that the government will explore and invest to improve this access. We need to consider that many of our rural patients need specialist care and making sure such patients can be quickly assisted from rural clinics and district hospital to provincial specialist hospital will be critical to save lives and ensure quicker recovery for our sickest and most injured patients.”
Tom said St John’s work demonstrated the difference a well-coordinated system could make.