By Baluku Alex
The Leadership of Kasese district has appealed to its partner Malteser International to donate the district with a functional class B ambulance in response to emergencies.
Malteser International has been one of the emergency responders and relief providers since the onset of the 7th May 2020 flash floods, offering mult-sectoral support to vulnerable flood and landslide victims in the district.
Kasese district has continuously year in year as in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2020 and 2021 has continuously experienced repeated floods and landslides as a result of heavy rains that have led to the breaking of soils and banks of major rivers of Nyamwamba, Lhubiriha, Mubuku and Nyamugasana among others.
During these emergencies many people including Children, women and persons with disabilities have been displaced and others have lost their lives.
According to the district Health Officer Dr. Yusuf Baseke the flooding of major rivers across the district, medical care services were hampered with after the bridges connecting to health Centers and Hospitals were swept away. However, he says they are grateful that Malteser responded by providing emergency services by building capacity in health facilities through training of health workers on how to respond to emergencies.
During the meeting with the district stakeholders, Emergency Medical Technicians and the Top Directors of Malteser International at Rwenzori International Hotel in Kasese town on Wednesday shortly after their field work where they were able to monitor and evaluate the implemented programs, speaker after speaker was advocating for a functional class B ambulance.
The District Administrative Officer, Mr. Amis Asuman Masereka, echoed the need for a well-equipped and standard ambulance if they are to save lives of many during emergencies. He gave an experience where he has concurrently lost three family relatives due to lack of a well quipped ambulance.
He said that most of the ambulances in the district were are not versed to the standard of an ambulance saying their inside medical care were minimal.
According to the Technical Coordinator emergency medical service program Malteser International, Laura Beutler when they had of the floods last year, they came on board and trained a big team of Emergency Medical Technicians and today they were in the district to follow up and see how far the project had reached and see what could be the needs so that they are able to switch to the second project.
Responding to the district’s outcry of the ambulance, Laura said that since the district leadership had raised the need for an ambulance, Malteser would make sure that with in their second project secure funding for the vehicle. However she said that this would depend on the funding of their donor.
The coordinator was grateful on how the project of Emergency Medical Technicians-EMT has been implemented saying that there has been a lot of success.
She said that there has been over 200 successful delivered babies under the care the EMT members of which 11 babies were delivered in the ambulances.
She added that they have also saved many people who had difficulties in breathing and that during their first phase, they concentrated on the training of health workers on how to respond to emergencies of which they would be thinking of providing equipments since they have a trained team.
