7,000 TRAINED TO HELP ACCIDENT VICTIMS (PAGE 53)

Seven thousand persons have received basic life support training to volunteer specialised services in handling of accident victims.
This has become necessary in view of the frequent accidents on the roads.
The absence of professional first aid volunteers, especially in communities along the major roads, has resulted in road traffic accidents recording high fatalities because the victims were handled unprofessionally, sometimes dragged forcefully from the accident vehicles.
Spearheading the training of the volunteers is a safety officer from the St John Ambulance service with support from the Ministry of Health and the National Road Safety Committee.
The Greater Accra Region, which was leading the country in the highest number of road accidents, has 4,000 of the volunteers trained in the communities along the major roads in the region to come to the aid of accidents victims.
The volunteers, apart from coming to the aid of road accident victims, have been trained to help people in the communities who are taken suddenly by heart attacks, stroke and wounds and need first aid, before transferring them to the nearest health facility.
Mr Philip Kwabena Adade, National Co-ordinator of the St John Ambulance, a first aid NGO, said apart from the training of volunteers in the communities students in schools had been trained and organised into clubs.
Mr Adade, who was speaking in an interview at a competition held for five divisions in the Grater Accra Region and Eastern Region, said the competitions were being used to sharpen the combat readiness of volunteers to manage road accident victims.
He said the competition, which tasked the capabilities of the volunteers in both theory and practicals, saw the Teshie-Nungua Division emerging as winners among the five contesting divisions with 89 points.
The Eastern Region is among the regions that have the highest number of accidents after Greater Accra and Ashanti regions took the second position with 88 points.
Accra Central Division placed third in the competition, while La Division came fourth with 78 and Tema Division taking the fifth position with 66 points.
Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Richard Kugre Gubillah of the Police Health Services and Medical Records urged the youth not to clamour for material gains at the expense of service to their communities.
He said names of people who laid their lives for their communities had stood the test of time to become great names than those who had material things in abundance but failed to use it to serve their communities.
ASP Gubillah, therefore, urged the volunteers to count themselves as great people who were prepared to come to the service of the communities in times of dire need.