Health
With reference to the recent attacks on Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel when responding and attending to emergency calls:
- What steps did her Department take to raise awareness and educate communities about the importance of EMS personnel for communities and (b) what has her Department done to make sure that there are protective measures in place for EMS personnel when attending to emergency calls in communities?
a.Ensuring a community awareness of EMS services and safety in communities.
The Department has developed a safety plan to protect its Emergency Medical Services staff. One part of the plan focuses on communities. EMS participates in the community meetings facilitated by the Department of Community Safety involving neighbourhood watches, school principals, community policing forums, religious leaders, and many more role players. Engagement with the ward councillors/community leaders happen regularly to involve them with the safety of the crews. EMS also attended various community engagements pre-COVID, and raised awareness on keeping EMS staff safe. In addition, the Department initiated a public awareness campaign “In support of life”, which was aimed at the public to keep EMS staff safe coupled with continued media awareness of the issue
b.Ensuring the safety of our staff and their work environment is our top priority and also features in our Safety Plan. As such, dedicated portable radios for all crews have been linked to the tracking system. This allows for real time tracking of crews. Staff have also been made aware of personal safety precautions they should follow when responding to a call. We also have a standard operating procedure in place with SAPS, that should an ambulance be called to a red zone it must be accompanied by SAPS.
We are continuously engaged in monitoring and mitigating the risk and can further add that the learning around staff safety has stood us in good stead. We have a very active internal process in which all stakeholders including organised labour, training and external stakeholders are regularly engaged around the safety measures and initiatives that are underway. Robust and regular engagement around difficult issues are aired in a collaborative and constructive manner. This includes support from our safety stakeholders including SAPS, DoCS and CoCT. This culminated in the establishment of the safety desk at the City’s Trafffic Management Centre which enabled shared intelligence and rapid response.
