Guizhou plans full-coverage pre-hospital first aid network

Southwest China's Guizhou province recently issued plans to establish a pre-hospital first aid network by 2025 – at the provincial, municipal, county and township levels – to meet the public's needs and train first aid personnel.

The plans outline that the pre-hospital first aid network should be controlled by provincial, municipal and prefecture level emergency centers and that emergency crew respond in less than 15 minutes in urban areas with a service radius of no more than 5 kilometers.

The provincial, municipal and prefecture level emergency centers' staff members will be dispatched by health departments when handling emergency medical aid. All the ambulances will be managed by provincial, municipal and prefecture-level emergency center information systems.

In addition, all the information systems will be connected and information will be shared with each other.

The network's service radius should be 10-20 km in rural areas and emergency staff members should respond in less than 30 minutes.

In cities and prefectures, there should be one ambulance per 30,000 people. The counties should also be equipped with one ambulance every 30,000 people and each township health center should also be equipped with one.

It has been decided that ambulance types should be allocated according to the pre-hospital first aid service needs, with the proportion of negative pressure ambulances at no less than 40 percent of the total ambulances in cities and prefectures.

Stretchers and vehicle equipment, such as medical equipment and communication equipment, will be standardized.

It is expected that by 2025, Guizhou's 120 emergency call system will cover all the areas. Moreover, the goal is that 95 percent of calls will be answered in 10 seconds and 95 percent of ambulances will respond in three minutes, while 95 percent of callers will be happy with the service.