THE St. John Ambulance (SJA) are deploying extra ambulance officers from Port Moresby (POM) to regional stations to boost the service capacity at regional stations during the national election period where increased general calls for help, particularly related to trauma will be expected.
Apart from that, 16 trainee ambulance officers who had recently graduated will be positioned in POM and St. John will also deploy three Ambulance Special Operation Teams (ASOT) to support the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary in the Highlands region upon the request of the Police Commissioner.
St John CEO, Matt Cannon said the ambulance special operations team will support the RPNGC airborne tactical unit, responding to time-critical medical emergencies.
“The team members are from St John’s ambulance stations in Kundiawa and Port Moresby.
“The ASOT team includes an ambulance HEO, two nurses and three qualified ambulance officers,” he said.
The ambulance service responded to signification incident of violence during the last national elections in 2017 and SJA already saw indications that this may the case during this election period as well.
One of the biggest challenges SJA faces is not having enough ambulances to respond to the growing number of people needing help.
SJA workload had increased from some 3,500 emergency calls in 2017 to over 13,800 emergency calls in 2021.
“This is a fourfold increase in people needing help from ambulance services in just four years,” said Cannon.
Many of the ambulances that used by SJA were purchased in 2017 for the APEC meeting.
These ambulances are over five years old and require expensive maintenance to keep up with the growing demand for service.
SJA is actively seeking donations to replace the old ambulances with new ones to be in a better position to reliably respond to the growing number of people needing emergency assistance around Papua New Guinea.
“SJA will continue to be on hand to help people during the election period.
“St John is not a political organisation; we help people regardless of their race, creed, or political affiliation.
“Please look out for our ambulances and take care of our ambulance officers; they are doing a thankless job to help others and save lives,” said Cannon.
