The Lagos State Government has commenced plans to establish two more Accident and Emergency Centres (Trauma) at Abule Egba and Lekki-Ajah axis of the state to improve response time to victims.
This was disclosed by the Director-General Lagos State Emergency Management Agency Alausa (LASEMA) Dr. Femi Oke-Osayintolu at the stakeholder meeting on Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) on Monday.
Osayintolu said the state also plans to establish a training institute at Igando for emergency workers, volunteers, mothers, and designated officials across the 57 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the state.
“A mobile app has been created with necessary features to enable callers to select the exact emergency situation they are reporting and by so doing, reduce emergency hotlines call time.”
Osayintolu said the app would be a test run by all relevant agencies and simulations done with it before it would be unveiled to the public.
He reiterated the need for a holistic view on the causes, prevention, and response to RTAs.
He said: “We have put a lot of things in place. We have decentralized the operations of LASEMA. We have put in the monitoring and evaluation unit so that we will have the best practices in LASEMA and all other key stakeholders.
“We are working on establishing an emergency institute that will be located at Igando. The institute will train all the key stakeholders on how to manage, respond, plan and prepare for an emergency in Lagos State.
“We are also going to build the capacity of all our 57 LGAs and we are going to ensure that disaster management is everyone’s business. All of these will happen very soon.
“We are currently testing some empirical equipment and want to be sure they work well before rolling them out to the public.”
In his presentation, Dr. Adeolu Arogundade who represented the Trauma center said the unit had attended to over 22,000 patients since its inception in 2009, adding that the figure comprised 72 percent males and 28 percent females.
Despite most of the cases being life-threatening, Arogundade said the unit has had over 98 percent success rate, adding that the modalities were mainly from hemorrhagic shock and head injury.
According to him, RTAs amounted to 55 percent of the cases, assaults 12 percent, accidental fall 8.8 percent, gunshot injuries 0.1 percent and other emergencies 20 percent.
He said the center is experiencing inadequacies such as power supply, referral systems, skilled manpower, and funding.