Hospital emergency services poised for improvement |18 April 2005

"We intend to re-organise the floor space to make the flow better for the patients when they come," Health principal secretary Maurice Loustau-Lalanne said in a recent interview.

He said measures will also be taken to separate in-coming casualties with regular patients to grant the accident victims more privacy.

"We want to be able to offload the patient from the ambulance into a closed area where he can be seen by a doctor and x-rayed immediately if necessary," the PS said.

He said the patient should also be able to receive whatever other diagnostic services are required within the same area, instead of being wheeled in and out of other departments as happens to be the case now.

He said the alterations to improve the casualty section of the hospital will take about six months, during which he hoped a new name will be found for the unit.

He also said that contrary to the tradition of rushing a patient to the hospital in an ambulance, Seychelles will strengthen an approach that is already being partially implemented, wherein the patients are attended to at the accident sites.

"We have already started to train our staff to be able to stabilise the patient at the site of accident so that we can provide this very important immediate care before the casualty is transported to the hospital," he said.