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BY RICHARD DRASIMAKU
ARUA: Friday, December 13, 2024
The construction of an ambulance call and dispatch center that is expected to improve coordination and management for medical emergencies is under way at the Arua Regional Referral Hospital.
Project engineers have estimated the works to be at around 79% as they edge towards the end of the extended project period that is set to elapse by December 30, 2024.
An additional extension would be sought to complete the remaining works that mainly involves the finishes, the ground levelling, and environmental restoration.
The Belgian development agency, Enabel has injected 448,344 euros (about sh1.7 bn) to finance the project.
George Waligo, the project’s general foreman, attributed some of the delays to new and unique designs being incorporated into the project such as the use of bamboo ceiling, concrete floor among others.
He said obtaining construction material from distant places like Masaka, the partial shutdown and eventual closure of Karumah bridge have all contributed to affect the pace of the project.
The ambulance call and dispatch center will add to the network of similar centres which are part of the national emergency Medical Strategic Plan 2020/2021 to 2024/2025.
It is a single storied building to house offices, a conference hall, kitchen and rest rooms to allow the officers to work conveniently.
The idea is to increase the number of emergency patients who are in need of ambulance response within one hour to 50% by 2025.
Road traffic crashes, premature births, diabetes, hypertension, cardiac conditions, mental emergencies, mob violence and natural and man-made disaster are some of the commonest causes of emergencies requiring quick ambulance response.
The government is by far the biggest provider of ambulance services in the country that is complemented by private health facilities and nongovernmental organization owned ambulance vehicles.
The ambulances are not evenly distributed as Ankole/Kigezi, Kampala and the Central region take the lions share while Busoga, Bugishu/Sebei have the least number of government ambulances.
But the biggest bottleneck lies with the poor management of the ambulances due to lack of coordination and monitoring mechanism.
The decentralized call and dispatch center will operate a cloud-based computer aided dispatch platform set to work full-time to improve responses to medical emergencies.
Abdu Kalsum, the Arua city secretary for social services, has expressed excitement about the establishment of the emergency call and dispatch center, saying that it will help to ensure optimal utilization of the available ambulances in the region.
She said controllers will be able to quickly establish off duty or standby ambulances and deploy them to respond to distress calls from the community.
“During Covid19 pandemic, we lost so many people not because there were no medicines but because there were no vehicles to transport them and the few ambulances at the time were not well coordinated,” said Kalsum.
