In the Republic of Namibia, a joint project between Malteser Hilfsdienst gGmbH and Windhoek Central Hospital’s emergency unit is aiming to improve road accident emergency rescue services. To do this, it intends to provide training courses for paramedics on emergency rescue and basic trauma care in order to ensure optimised emergency service provision.
Background:
Trauma and injury rates following road accidents are rising sharply in Namibia. Since the country’s fire services, which are traditionally responsible for providing an emergency service for road accidents, are few and far between, ambulance drivers are often the first responders at the accident scene. Yet they currently lack the knowledge needed to guarantee patients adequate preclinical care.
Activities:
-\tRunning two-week International Trauma Life Support (ITLS) access courses to improve emergency rescue services
-\tRunning basic trauma courses for potential first responders
-\tRunning a supervised training course for instructors
-\tSetting up an ITLS unit for Namibia for requesting cooperation at international level
Impact:
The aim is to provide emergency rescue training for a total of 264 people through the project partnership. In the long term, the intention is for the trained instructors to pass on what they have been taught as multipliers.