AKIPRESS.COM - Thanks to the Emergency Medical Services Project better trained and managed medical personnel in hospitals across Uzbekistan will be appropriately equipped to help millions of people impacted by accidents and medical emergencies, the World Bank reports.

On April 25, 2018, the project was approved by the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, and will be financed by a US$100 million credit from the International Development Association.

The project will develop integrated dispatch centers in all 12 regions of Uzbekistan, and in the capital, which will be responsible for receiving calls, dispatching all ambulances within their borders and monitoring their performance. The dispatch centers will be crucial to the effective and efficient use of EMS resources and their core element will be a common computer-aided dispatch and communications system capable of monitoring the distribution and availability of resources in order to respond to emergencies rapidly and effectively.

The project will invest in the initial training of physicians and nurses in emergency medicine to encourage more staff to work in this area. In addition, it will acquire and distribute around 60 modern Advance Life Support ambulances among hospitals across Uzbekistan, as well as essential equipment needed for those vehicles to deal with trauma and medical emergencies, including obstetrical and neonatal emergencies.
Improved response times, better equipment and better training, should result in better outcomes in terms of reduced mortality and morbidity, increasing confidence among Uzbek citizens in the quality and professionalism of the EMS Service. In turn, this should lead to increased utilization of the service for true emergencies with concomitant improvements in outcomes.