App to help stamp out slow ambulance responses?

IF YOU’VE ever called an ambulance for a loved one, you’ll know all too well how excruciating it is to wait for help to arrive; minutes feel like hours.

And, with South Africa’s current response times not where they should be, the wait can also be detrimental to the person in need of assistance.

Every second counts in medical emergencies. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes, after just five minutes without oxygen, brain cells start to die, and every minute thereafter 10% more die, with complete brain death occurring within 14 minutes.

Stroke victims lose the use of two million brain cells every two minutes, and arterial bleeds can result in death in mere minutes.

The CEO of AURA, South Africa’s on-demand security and medical response platform, Warren Myers, said the current response landscape was falling far short of delivering the vital service that all South Africans deserved.

The Gauteng Department of Health reports that the current average response time for an ambulance in Gauteng ranges from 30 to 60 minutes, well short of the international standard of seven minutes for life-threatening calls.

Myers added that current technology has huge potential to improve emergency response times for all and streamline the process of getting help.

“With the introduction of smart technology into the emergency response sector, the outdated practice of phoning an ambulance, explaining the nature of the emergency, as well as your exact location, and then waiting for the agent to dispatch a vehicle, can be simplified to a single touch of a panic button,” he said.

“The AURA platform does all the hard work for you – pinpointing your location and using a connected device installed in the response vehicles, ensuring that the closest vetted private ambulance is dispatched to you, saving precious time. Think of it like Uber for ambulances,” explained Myers.

Reuben Ruiters, Gauteng EMS Director: Operations, said there were various categories of calls, for which response times differed.

“We have P1 calls, where the response time is under 30 minutes. This could be 60 minutes in rural areas. The continued attacks on paramedics and robberies also affect the response times,” he said.

Netcare 911’s response time for most medical emergencies in a metropolitan area is less than 15 minutes.

ER24’s Russel Meiring said unfortunately they had seen attacks on emergency services rise in the past few years. This was due to paramedics being seen as a “soft” target.

* For information on how you can get an AURA-powered emergency response service, visit https://www. aura.services/our-partners/.