Since the Gauteng Executive Council took a decision in 2009 to provincialise Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in line with the National Health Act - there has been a notable improvement in the provision of quality service and seamless operation of EMS in the City of Johannesburg.

This is the assurance given by the Gauteng MEC for Health, Ms Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko when responding to questions at the Gauteng Provincial Legislature recently.

The City of Johannesburg EMS provincialisation was concluded in January 2020 and amongst others the following has been achieved since then:

• The creation of one emergency number (112), as compared to many numbers that were used by the Local Authority. All emergency calls are now received through one emergency communication centre and there is no combination or fire and other utility services calls. This means calls are now routed to a dedicated Gauteng EMS emergency communication centre instead of a general service communication centre, thus improving response time.

• All complaints and/ or delays, adverse events are managed through GDoH emergency medical services by qualified professionals.

• Gauteng EMS has no boundaries between metros and districts and resources can be activated from any Metropolitan Municipality or District.

• The quality of Emergency Medical Care and Treatment is at an Intermediate Life Support and/or higher as compared to the previous arrangement where the city’s emergency management services were reliant mainly on the Basic Life Support staff, with fire qualifications.

• The Gauteng Department of Health staff have a bigger scope of practice for patient care as compared to City of Johannesburg having less scope of practice as per Health Professionals Council of South Africa guidelines.

Despite all these gains, the provincialisation of EMS is not immune to challenges. These range from service delivery protests which delay calls to emergencies, damages caused on ambulances and response cars due to community attacks to paramedic attacks which impact on the EMS operational strength due to lengthy sick leave from injuries (mental and physical injuries). The classification of certain areas in the City of Johannesburg as hot zone (from previous attacks and service delivery protests) which means EMS officials must wait for South African Police Services escort to go to the scene.

“The Department would like to plead with community members not to interfere, intimidate, or attack paramedics as they attend to emergencies. The attack of EMS personnel will have dire consequences for communities as our crews will end up not being able to respond to emergencies or being delayed when called by the very same communities. We should not allow criminals to deny citizens their right to access emergency medical services”, said MEC Nomantu Nkomo- Ralehoko.

Ends/
Issued by the Gauteng Department of Health

For more information, contact Tshepo Shawa, Spokesperson for the MEC for Health: 072 222 6333 or

Tshepo.Shawa@gauteng.gov.za

Or
Motalatale Modiba, Head of Communication: 064 803 0808 or

mediaenquiries@gauteng.gov.za

For media releases, speeches and news visit the Gauteng Department of Health’s’ portal at www.gauteng.gov.za