GOVERNMENT GAMBLING WITH LIVES

Editor,

First let me extend my appreciations to our government for introducing Emergency Preparedness and Response (EPR) Department to assist the nation in as far as ambulance service is concerned. Surely this was a good move.

Although the introduction of this department is a good move, I personally believe that to some extent, this is a duplication of work or public service delivery. I say this because initially all the government hospitals had ambulances are manned by qualified nurses. For that reason, I fail to understand why government decided to open an independent ambulance section?

I am aware that some people will say this practice is done in other countries but my question, given especially the financial challenges the country is faced with, would be is Swaziland ready to copy everything from fully developed countries? The answer to that is a big NO!

spending

Government employees are not paid salaries on the same scale of developed countries. If the money government has and is still spending to fund this department, it should rather be using it to improve health facilities of the country, pay better salaries to its employees and purchase enough medical drugs.

I know most of the EPR paramedics have Basic Ambulance Assistant qualifications. At the same time I am not sure if their qualifications can allow them to perform duties such as injecting patients. I believe that such should be reserved for people trained in the field of medicine but my apologies, if I am mistaken. I have witnessed incidents where our paramedics perform these duties and I have always asked myself if they are qualified to perform them or not as per their Basic Ambulance Assistant qualifications. I am not trying to be jealous but we really must not be taken for granted simply because somebody believes we do not know the procedure for certain duties.

With my poor or limited knowledge, I know that after you have acquired the BAA qualification, you need to have AEA qualification in order to perform certain duties like the drug injections. If these paramedics were working under the supervision of a qualified nursing sister, I would not have any problem. This department should be housed in hospitals with full supervision of qualified nurses. Government must not gamble with our lives.

Sgedlemba eSwatini  

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