Gauteng Health is working on measures to speed up medical emergency response times, with the current notorious delays blamed on staff shortages, protests and crime, and with some areas so dangerous ambulances require police escorts, according to Gauteng Health MEC Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko.
She said ambulances respond to only 56% of calls from critically ill people within 30 minutes in Gauteng’s urban areas, the worst being in Ekurhuleni, where only 46% of life-threatening emergency calls were responded to within half an hour.
The response rate was 52% in Johannesburg, 72% in Tshwane, 62% in Sedibeng and 63% in the West Rand, reports News24.
“Service delivery protests, infrastructure and footprint limitations are some of reasons. Hot zones are also a challenge, where ambulances must start at the police station for escort, prolonging the response time if there are no SAPS response vehicles available,” she added.
Nkomo-Ralehoko said the department was working on strategies to improve priority response times – for critically ill or people needing urgent care – to under 30 minutes in urban areas and 69 minutes in rural areas.
“We have engaged law enforcement agencies to assist with an escort to hot zones. We have also procured five 4×4 specialised ambulances … and implemented Gauteng Scheduled Emergency Transport to reduce patient waiting times during referrals between health facilities, which is being piloted across all regions.”
Vehicle tracking, panic buttons and cameras in vehicles had also been introduced to reduce paramedic attacks.
Meanwhile, DA Gauteng Health spokesperson Jack Bloom said the international standard was 80% response within 15 minutes for priority one calls.
“The department no longer measures this high standard. It said it doesn’t collect this data since the revision and implementation of the 2020 National Indicator Data Set (a minimum group of indicators introduced by the NDoH which every public health facility is expected to collect, use and report).
“I agree with using new technology, but the reality is that EMS is plagued by mismanagement and corruption that needs to be fixed to speed up response times to emergency cases,” Bloom said.
He added that since 2020, when the Gauteng Government took over management of ambulance services from various municipalities, response times had deteriorated.
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