The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has released five basic life support ambulances together with teams of medical personnel of the Corps and 30 active Close User Group lines to the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.
This was contained in a statement sent to POLITICS NIGERIA by the corps spokesperson, Bisi Kazeem. She noted that this is to help assist the evacuation of Coronavirus victims from the point of identification to isolation centres
She said the ambulances were presented to the Corps by the Country Director, United Nations Decade of Action on Road Safety and Traffic Injury Prevention in Nigeria and the Coordinator, Ambulance and Emergency Response Unit of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 at the National Headquarters of the Commission.
“FRSC has always been at the forefront of national commitment and at this moment of global emergency, the PTF seeks to further the existing collaboration with the Corps in the area of emergency response services in a bid to enhance established collective efforts geared towards combating the dreaded virus.
“The need to activate the ambulance service system has become grossly consequential at this time that records have shown a consistent rise in the number of infected persons in the country which is already less than two dozens away from a thousand cases,” the statement read in parts.
The spokesperson said that irrespective of the fact that other agencies have also donated a number of ambulances for the said programme, the need for more cannot be overemphasized.
This newspaper gathered that FRSC health workers will be subjected to intense training on personal protection, handline of victims and decontamination of the vehicle among others.
The statement said: “They are to work for 2 weeks, after which they will be subjected to 2weeks isolation by the PTF in designated centres and certified negative before they can be allowed to reunite with their families and report back to duty.”
