Ali Darwish, Assistant Executive Director of the Ambulance Service. Pic: Baher Amin/The Peninsula
Doha: By introducing several changes in operations’ pattern, the Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) ambulance service continue to provide an effective care to people during the holy Ramadan.
The arrangements to provide a smooth and effective service to the people during Ramadan are organised based on the previous statistics and common pattern of incidents, said Ali Darwish, Assistant Executive Director of the Ambulance Service, yesterday.
“Ramadan is a special month, but like any other month HMC’s ambulance service provides patients with access to effective care. We consider how we reach people in Ramadan and how do we effectively provide them the care. Then we apply some more plans during Ramadan to take to indefinite care. Different departments at the ambulance service, each by its area of speciality, applies the efforts to help paramedics, who are the front line staff,” he said. “We use previous years’ statistic to see common trend in Ramadan. The peak time changes in Ramadan between 2pm to 2am. Within that time the highest peak is from 5pm to 9pm. At this time everyone at the Ambulance Service will be on their toes,” he said.
During the first two weeks of Ramadan a total of 8,395 calls received by the service. It shows an average of 500 to 600 calls per day. “During Ramadan, we received an equal number of Road Traffic Accidents and medical emergencies such as abdominal pain, muscle cramp, hypoglycemia and hypertension. But during the peak hours, the roads traffic accidents are more. They are high in number but low in risk. Because the speed is less but the traffic flow is more,” said Darwish.
During the day time in Ramadan, a total of 69 ambulances are operational across the country. The number increases to 77 in the peak hours. All ambulances are staffed with two paramedics. In addition, rapid response team has a scene supervisor or distribution superior called Delta.
“Then we add critical care paramedics, and these highly skilled clinicians who do not go to the patient but go to the ambulance which is with the patient. They can apply some extra advance intervention. They give more drugs and assist in cases such as pregnancy, cardiac arrest etc. We have nine scene supervisors and nine critical care paramedics,” said Darwish.
Also two vehicles operating round the clock with operation officers, who are also higher clinicians who look into the distribution of ambulances and clinical part of the Ambulance Service.
