Cape Town - In the past three months the Western Cape Emergency Services together with 20 centres have seen 35 000 trauma cases.
Despite the trauma, triage health facilities have been able to cope with both trauma and Covid-19 cases.
Groote Schuur spokesperson Alaric Jacobs said: “The New Year weekend at Groote Schuur Hospital had similar numbers to our previous weekends and there was no major increase in numbers.
“The percentages of patients were approximately 60% interpersonal violence, 30% road traffic trauma and 10% sports injuries and falls. Even with the additional trauma cases, our hospitals were able to cope with both Covid and non-Covid admissions. We thank our staff for their continued commitment in providing quality health care in need to everyone in the province.”
Head of the Western Cape Health Department Dr Keith Cloete said despite curfew being removed, their health facilities were expecting numbers to increase due to festivities and were coping relatively well.
“In the past three months we have seen 35 105 trauma cases at our 20 emergency centres. The recent lift of curfew around December 30, we expected an impact on it. New Year’s week was the highest with 786 patients compared to over 600 on Boxing Day, then it dropped down to 462. If you look at our admissions during that time, our admissions were increasing but the weekend admissions with 51 on New Years Day which was high,” he said.
Byron la Hoe of the Western Cape Medical Emergency Services said their staff had reported 43 600 medical related incidents, 11 453 trauma cases and 1 973 traffic cases between December 1 to January 2.
“It has been a busy December and end-of-year weekend for the Western Cape Government Health's Emergency Medical Services (EMS) as they work tirelessly to provide essential first responder assistance, transport clients to healthcare facilities, and save people’s lives. For the period December 1, 2021 to January 1, 2022, the EMS attended to 43 600 medical-related incidents, 11 453 trauma cases, 1 973 road traffic incidents, and 204 fires in the Western Cape. A total of 6 479 inter-facility transport trips were made to ensure that clients received the care they needed in a time-efficient and safe manner.
“This New Year weekend, the EMS responded to 5 348 incidents in the province, down from 1 243 incidents the previous long Christmas weekend.
“The top five incident types for the weekend included non-cardiac pain (883) weapon assault (771) respiratory complaints (453), physical assault (31), and obstetric or gynaecological complaints (310),” he said.
An emergency personal staff member, who asked not to be identified, said they battled to get services to Hanover Park where a patient had been involved in a pedestrian accident and had to rely on tactical response teams to assist.
“There were no ambulances available and we had to rely on contacts and members from security companies,” the source said.
Weekend Argus