A RELIABLE and efficient ambulance service plays an important role in providing emergency medical care to patients — 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Ambulances in general allow medical professionals to apply first aid treatment required during the emergency trips to ensure the patients’ stability until the arrival to their next hospital.

On our Page 3 report today, we have the St John Ambulance CEO Ema Bovoro raising the issue that there is an urgent need for more ambulances to service the Central Division given its burgeoning population.

The report says that St John Ambulance and the National Fire Authority (NFA) have a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Health to help transport emergency cases to the Colonial War Memorial Hospital.

Over the past years, the number of health centres, nursing stations and dispensaries throughout the Central Division has grown, indicating that the ambulance service has become more an integral part of the emergency services at CWM Hospital.

St John Ambulance has two ambulances while the NFA has one catering to more than 200,000 people in the Central Division. With this population density is the responsibility of dealing with an increase in the number of emergency calls.

While they have two ambulances at their disposal and trained ambulance officers to attend to emergency calls, there is definitely a need for more ambulances to meet the demand of the rising population density.

On average, St John attends to around nine calls a day and in a year attends to about 3500 cases but they are the only ones the organisation could attend to with the two ambulances at their disposal while the NFA, with the lone ambulance they have, attended to more than 500 responses in the first five months of this year.

Maintaining the ambulance service comes at a price — St John Ambulance needs $500,000 to serve the whole of Fiji — from the airport in Nausori to the interior or the rugged terrains of Ra — there is a need for funds to provide a high quality emergency service.

But, a key constraint on the service delivery is the budget allocation despite the increase in demand and cost of services. The allocated budget remained at $100,000 but the actual expenditure is $500,000.

With the Health Ministry mission to provide a high quality healthcare delivery system, there is hope that the powers that be will heed their plight when making budget submissions to have their budget increased and provide the much needed extra ambulance vehicles.

Providing a more accessible and effective ambulance service is a mammoth role. It’s about saving lives.

Let’s not forget that rapid and competent response to accidents and emergencies could mean the difference between life and death.