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Workshop on pre-hospital emergency care held in K’si

 A training workshop on pre-hospital emergency care and cardiovascular diseases was held to encourage timely intervention for individu­als, who suffer cardiac arrests, in Kumasi, the Ashanti Region.

Dubbed the ‘The Basic Life Support’, the day’s event was organised by the Elijeko Foundation, a non-governmen­tal organisation, in collaboration with the National Ambulance Service (NAS), last Friday.

Participants, including mem­bers of the Ghana Federation of Traditional Medicine Practi­tioners Association; healthcare professionals, and students from the Garden City Univer­sity College, were trained on how to deliver cardiopulmonary resuscitation and first aid.

Founder of the foundation, Mr Andrews Nyantakyi, said the campaign was organised to save lives often lost to cardiac arrest due to the inability of bystand­ers to provide timely life-saving resuscitation.

The World Health Organ­isation (WHO) estimates that 17.9 people die each year from Cardiovascular Diseases world­wide while Ghana recorded about 14,103 cardiac deaths in 2020.

Mr Nyantakyi said “We identified a gap in the health care approach in Ghana that is, being unable to handle emergencies and preventable deaths, so we partnered with the NAS to begin the workshop.

“We hope to use this program to create a platform to promote direct community engagement and equip Ghanaians with the knowledge of what, when, and how to respond to emergencies”.

He said since the founda­tion was established in 2016, it had rolled out preventive health education, medical outreach, and training programmes for more than 40,000 beneficiaries with plans to reach more in remote areas.

An Emergency Medicine Specialist at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital Kumasi, Dr Joseph Bonney, called for the en­actment of a law for every public facility to have a first aid box and automated external defibrillator.

He advocated basic life sup­port training for workers in public facilities while the government should incorporate cardiopulmo­nary resuscitation and basic first aid principles in the curriculum of basic schools.

The Director of Operations of the NAB, Dr Foster Ansong, appealed to the public to use emergency toll-free numbers for genuine emergencies.

“There were over 20 million emergency prank calls recorded in 2020 and 2022, and these prank calls made it difficult for people with genuine emergencies to access emergency services thereby affecting service response time,” he said.

The Country Representative of the Elijeko Foundation, Ms Celestina Kalor Abapiri, ap­pealed to the public to volunteer blood to support the work of the National Blood Bank.

BY TIMES REPORTER

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