The Deputy Director of Operations for the Ghana Ambulance Services, Foster Ansong-Bridjan has called upon private individuals and corporate bodies to help them with Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) as they lead the fight against COVID-19.
READ MORE:GIJ SRC petitions authority to halt e-learning, online exams
According to him, this will help augment supplies from the government which are not enough.
He explained that due to the increasing cases from contact tracing underway, staff of the ambulance services have to be geared up fully when responding to COVID-19 cases. And that the need for PPEs have gone up because, “our staff need to be disinfected and discard their PPEs after every trip for their protection before returning to their bases,” he said.
Speaking in an interview on Happy98.9FM’s ‘Epa Hoa Daben’ Mr. Ansong-Bridjan noted, “we make an average of 15 COVID-19 related trips per day, and our staff have to change per trip to treatment centers for their safety. This is because we cannot tell which patients will have their results come back negative. Because of this routine, we run out of stock rather quickly”.
He told host, Samuel Eshun that he cannot tell for sure the total number of PPEs the ambulance service has received so far, but confessed that they mostly get half of the stock they request in a day. “We’re asking for extra support to ensure that we get more of these PPEs to help each other”, he appealed.
Foster disclosed that his outfit needs some 2,000 coveralls and 10,000 face masks at the moment to help them in the fight against COVID-19.
He however acknowledged that the government providing almost every constituency with an ambulance has contributed immensely to the fight against the pandemic. “If we didn’t have the ambulances at this period, it would’ve been disastrous because we have transported our fair share of COVID-19 patients to hospitals”, he made known.
READ MORE: Coronavirus is real, so please stay at home – COVID-19 survivor
The Ghana Ambulance Service is not the only body to have asked for more PPEs. Some medical personnel in COVID-19 treatment centers have also threatened to withdraw their services because of the unavailability of PPEs.
With the world fighting the COVID-19 virus, there is a shortage of PPEs globally, but the government of Ghana is taking steps to resolve this issue by partnering with some local firms to produce PPEs.
By; Joel Sanco