Spotlight on 'appalling' Gulf road death toll

While road conditions in most Gulf states are generally good, unsafe driving practices are common, especially on highways. As a result, fatality rates due to traffic crashes are much higher than other developing countries when compared with vehicle ownership.

This disturbing trend and its huge impact on regional emergency response agencies are to be debated at the International Emergency Medical Services Congress on October 12.

The importance of the Congress - which forms part of the Arab Health series of events - has been recognized by a number of regional governments and is supported by the Ministry of Health, United Arab Emirates; Dubai Police and Ambulance Department; Hamad Medical Corporation, Qatar; Emergency Medical Services, Kuwait; and the Ministry of Health, Oman.

A recent regional report on the effectiveness of emergency medical services in improving road traffic safety identified key issues that needed to be addressed in the UAE:

• Training police and civil defense staff in first aid and handling traffic injuries
• Equipping emergency response vehicles with state-of-the-art equipment
• Improving hospital emergency rooms
• Training medical teams to handle injuries at a crash site as well as medical centres
• Improving coordination of police, emergency response teams and medical services at traffic crashes

Leading the debate on these issues and the impact of road traffic accidents on Emergency Medical Services in the wider Middle East region will be Assistant Professor Frank Archer, Director of the Centre for Ambulance and Paramedic Studies at Monash University, Australia.

Professor Archer will provide a world best practices ambulance service perspective on reducing the Gulf states' road toll. His institution is active both in international and regional ambulance paramedic and emergency medical education - the UAE in particular.

"The appallingly high traffic death rates in the Gulf states will be an important part, but by no means all, of the debate on improving Emergency Medical Services in the Middle East," said Chris Mullinger, conference director of the Institute for International Research (IIR), the congress organizers.

"And it is not just the public sector that needs to plan for dealing with medical emergencies. More and more companies, from major petrochemical operations to shopping mall and hotel managers, realise the very real need to respond to medical emergencies on their premises.

"Throughout the world, recent years have seen remarkable progress in the development of emergency medical services. This, the first International Emergency Medical Services Congress, is dedicated to assisting in making possible the best and most advanced EMS systems in the region."