Speedy, emergency medical service launched
A new, speedy emergency medical service with global expertise is to be launched soon to quickly and speedily respond to desperate calls from injured and ill Sri Lankans.Falck from Denmark has acquired 50 per cent of Sri Lankan Emergency Medical Services (EMS) company, Med1 (Pvt) Ltd to offer a wide range of emergency medical services and products to people in need in Colombo initially and later across the island, said Donnie Woodyard, Med1 Managing Director/CEO in an interview with Business Times.
He noted that this partnership in Sri Lanka would be used as a platform for expansion of the service in Asia. Med1 was founded in 2011 with 26 employees but that number will increase to more than a 100 before 2013. Falck and its new partner Med1 plan to deploy 20 ambulances, medical cars and motorcycles ready to serve subscribers to the service in Colombo by the end of 2012, said Brigadier (Ret) L.C. Perera, Chief Operations Officer.
Falck is the largest multinational ambulance services’ provider globally with operations in 35 countries and a fleet of over 1800 ambulances that respond two million emergency calls annually, he said.
Falck’s initial investment will be focused on providing emergency services in Colombo. This will include further development of Med1’s, 24-hour, trilingual dispatching centre, putting a modern fleet of European standard ambulances and response vehicles on the road, and hiring and training hundreds of new medical care providers to offer international quality medical care in Sri Lanka.
Elaborating on the new venture Mr Woodyard said, “The goal is to give Sri Lankans, visiting tourists, and local businesses peace of mind, knowing that during a medical emergency, help is both affordable and only a phone call away. With the Med1 system, that peace of mind can become a reality. By simply making a phone call to our tri-lingual hotline, you can have highly trained professionals, prepared to begin immediate treatment, at your home within minutes”. He said for many ‘this will certainly be the difference between life and death’.The ambulance fleet will be equipped with the latest available technology specialized for out-of-hospital care and staffed by specialists trained to deliver life-saving emergency medical care immediately.
He pointed out that the delivery of prompt and professional pre-hospital care has seen the reduction of death and disability from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) including cardio-vascular disease, chronic respiratory diseases, and motor vehicle accidents by 30 per cent.
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