FCT to boost emergency response with 12 ambulances, digital initiatives

The Mandate Secretary, Health and Human Services Secretariat, Dr Adedolapo Fasawe, has disclosed that the Federal Capital Territory will soon get 12 new ambulances and digitise emergency response efforts to ensure the safety of the lives of residents in the FCT.

Fasawe made the disclosure on Monday day at a community first responders training themed “Scaling Impactful Tech-Enabled Training for First Responders Against NCD Trends organised by the Health Emergency Initiative in collaboration with the FCT Primary Health Care Board, in Abuja on Tuesday.

The Secretary, while giving her keynote address, announced the purchase of the ambulances, adding that the administration was also targeting ensuring that nurses and other first responders had Basic Life Support training.

“I’m happy to announce that we will soon commission about 12 ambulances here. Mr Wike purchased new ambulances for us. And we don’t only want ambulances, we want ambulance services, where we will have a station, we will have pilots, and all our nurses are first responders. They have to be BLS-certified

“Anybody who will have a patient come to the hospital must have the certification. That’s our main goal. When we all learn this, we become the bridge between communities and the hospitals. Before the patient gets to the hospital, we are able to give support, make a decision,” Fasawe stated.

She also said the administration was working to bring all hospitals online, noting that telemedicine was the future of medicine

“Very soon, all our hospitals will be able to access them online. You will be able to know when there is a bed, when there is no bed, and which hospital is closest to you. Technology is very important. And we should start to leverage technology more in our battle against… We have the most horrible health indices.

“It has come to a stage that we don’t have enough doctors. At times, I go to a hospital to do something else, and will have to remove my fine dress and wear scrubs to help them. We don’t have enough doctors.

“But imagine a situation whereby the doctor is busy, you can enter a cubicle, and you are talking to a doctor in real time, and he is telling the nurse there. In fact, there are machines that will measure your blood pressure, measure your blood sugar, and they will write prescriptions for you right there.

“Not only writing prescriptions, but the medicine will be in that health centre, without the doctor travelling from Rubochi to Abaji. That is what telemedicine will bring to us,” she added.

Speaking to newsmen, the Acting Secretary, FCT Primary Healthcare Board, Dr. Ruqqaya Wamakko, said the training was put together to equip residents at the community level with the knowledge to respond to emergency situations in the absence of healthcare workers.

She highlighted the collaboration with community youth leaders, persons with disability, traditional and religious leaders, emergency agencies and the Federal Road Safety Corps to be able to tackle the spread of non-communicable diseases like Hypertension and Diabetes.

Also speaking, the Executive Director, HEI, Paschal Achunine, disclosed that the organisation had trained 146,000 emergency first responders across five states in the country.

He added that the goal of the training was to equip trainees to improve health outcomes during emergencies.

“The goal is to equip them with the skill or refresh their skill for those who have the skill already, to go to communities and areas where they operate to train others, but also to build synergy to ensure that health outcomes during emergencies are improved across the FCT.

“This is one of the series. We have done this successfully in other states, Imo, Kwara, Lagos, Rivers and Ondo State. To date, we have trained about 146,000 in the States where we have operated. The beauty is that more states have now invested more resources to have their health workers from BLS to the abridged version of this training to ensure that people do something positive during emergencies,” he said.