St John serving in a tough place

The National Weekender
LIFESTYLE
One of the St John ambulance vehicles responding to an emergency in Chimbu. – Pictures courtesy of St John Ambulance.

By LULU MARK
SIRENS of the green ambulance have reached some remote mountainous parts of Chimbu. And the people have seen it helping some from their communities to get to the hospital in town. So the emergency calls keep rising in number and frequency.
It becomes quite overwhelming for the four St John Ambulance staff with the two ambulance vehicles but once an emergency call is registered they know that a response must be made in time to have a chance at saving lives.
A timely response sometimes means working into the night or early hours of the morning to distant locations which the four try to do but cannot because there are emergencies that they attend to during the day and they are worn out.
The St John Ambulance service in Chimbu was established in July last year in partnership with the provincial health authority (PHA)
A storeroom at the Kundiawa General Hospital was renovated to be used as the office.
Since then the use of the 111 service coordinated by the national ambulance control centre has been incredible demonstrating the real need for ambulance services in such provincial centres.
However, the problem is that the most emergency calls are received during the hours when the station was supposed to be closed.
Funding from the Chimbu PHA only allows the engagement of one ambulance crew from 8am to 6.30pm but the ambulance officers are on call at all hours.
In a period of seven months (July to February), more than half of the 919 calls for assistance were registered after hours.
On average more than two calls were received at night, requiring the limited staff to work overtime.
This is responding to more calls than any of St John’s other regional stations.
The four officers using two ambulancse try to attend to all emergencies as much as possible but with the limitations in manpower and resources they just cannot do more.

St John ambulance staff and members of the community.

Prominent Chimbu resident, Willie Kupo whose wife is a senior medical registrar in the pediatric department at Kundiawa Hospital has recently expressed concerns about this unsustainable state of affairs.
“It bothers me that the ambulance can’t respond to emergencies at night,” he said.
“St John needs support from the Government to train and employ more ambulance officers to staff stations at night.
“It’s fantastic that St John have been able to step up to meet the demands for assistance from our communities.
“But the St John Ambulance service in Chimbu cannot respond to emergencies at night because they do not have funding to employ enough staff to operate the ambulances at night.
“This means mothers give birth away from a hospital or die from injuries wait until morning for an ambulance.
“Emergencies can’t wait until the morning. Our people rely on St John so we need them to be available 24 hours. The current situation is unfair on the well-trained staff involved who could even consider leaving for an easier posting with St John in Port Moresby.
“It also represents a potential reputational risk to the Chimbu PHA, St John and in fact the Kundiawa Hospital since patients are received later and sicker if there is an inability for people to get emergency care in a timely manner.
“The trust and support that the community has shown St John since it began operating in the province will be significantly compromised or damaged by the inability to provide a properly managed 24hr service.
Kupo thanked the PHA for the initiative in getting St John set up in Chimbu but he urged the health department, provincial government and districts to immediately support St John so they can operate the service on a 24 hour-basis.