After a fruitless rescue attempt that lasted more than two hours, the four people trapped in the torrents of Pachang Creek
Operations in urban areas have greatly improved under the joint efforts of fire and health departments. But most remote areas, including places visited by hundreds thousands of people every year, suffer a severe shortage of emergency services. Rescue equipment and skills need to be improved to shore up the system.
I think it was wrong for the rescue units to turn the relatives of the victims away, telling them to call other air-borne rescue units for help. Emergency rescue services should be just one phone call away -- a specialized organization should take care of the rest of the process. After all, most people are not familiar with the emergency rescue system.
A special command center with full authority to coordinate different rescue units is crucial to the success of rescue missions. The government should give the center's personnel the authority to decide whether to dispatch helicopters in similar cases in the future.
Switzerland runs a very sophisticated emergency medical and rescue system in its portion of the Alps. About 1,500 rescue missions are carried out every year and over 90 percent of them are performed by helicopters, most involving evacuations from inaccesible terrain. There is a 24-hour rescue command center and a communication network that covers every corner of the country. There is also an extensive network of rescue stations; helicopters can reach any location. They either drop rescue squads to carry out the mission or evacuate people.
In Taiwan, in addition to a lack of equipment and professional expertise, applications for the use of helicopters are lengthy and complicated. Regulations on helicopter use have been mainly designed to facilitate the transfer of patients between hospitals (even though less than 5 percent of the transfers are conducted by helicopters). Although the application process is essential to prevent the misuse of helicop-ters, the rules make it very difficult for ordinary people to get them in emergencies.
Besides, emergency rescue situations requiring helicopters are very different from transfering patients between hospitals. For example, a helicopter is not needed to transfer a city patient with a bone fracture to a hospital in the same city. But it becomes indispensable when people suffer a broken bone in a remote mountainous area. The current regulations on situations eligible for helicopter use have to be revised.
To simplify the process, the most important thing is to give the command center the authority to coordinate the rescue efforts of different units. Emergency rescue service should be available with just one phone call to the command center, which would then coordinate the equipment, helicopters if necessary and the dispatch of rescue personnel. (Several states in the US run their emergency rescue systems this way.)
I hope the new government will establish a 24-hour emergency rescue network that can respond to land, sea and air emergencies, and coordinate different emergency rescue resources. The government should also set up a command center to provide people with information and directions when accidents happen, whatever the emergency. Rescue services should stand by round-the-clock and be ready to take off any time.
If Switzerland can do this, Taiwan should be able to do it, too.
Kao Wei-feng is an attending physician at Veterans General Hospital's emergency department.
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