Karlovy Vary, West Bohemia, Nov 25 (CTK) – Health rescuers from the Czech Republic and Saxony can newly operate on the other country´s territory if necessary, according to a bilateral cooperation agreement that the governors of three northern Czech regions and representatives of Saxony signed yesterday.
The goal of the planned cooperation is mainly to ensure the safety of skiers in the Ore Mountains situated in the Czech-Saxon border area.
It enables the rescuers to decide fully for the benefit of the patients, Roman Sykora, director of the Health Rescue Service of the Karlovy Vary Region, told journalists.
Apart from Karlovy Vary, the two other Czech regions that border on Saxony are those of Liberec and Usti nad Labem.
The agreement “makes our hands free. We can help intervene on the German side of the border, we can transfer patients across the border and we no longer have to hand them over [to our Saxon counterparts at the borderline], which is rather undignified,” Sykora said.
“We can transfer opiates and use flash beacons on the German territory – and the same goes for the Germans” on the Czech territory, Sykora said.
“Our operational centres will keep in contact,” he said.
A cross-border operation can save patients´ lives mainly in situations where the domestic rescue service is not available for some reasons, Sykora added.
He said the Karlovy Vary regional rescue services will try to enhance the language proficiency of its staff in order to prevent the problem of a language barrier.
“Nevertheless, we will use bilingual forms and we have a few operators who speak fluent German,” he said.
The cooperation agreement which covers the whole 454-km long Czech-Saxon border. It is the first agreement of its kind in the Czech Republic.
“Next year, we will negotiate about a similar cooperation along the border with Bavaria,” said Martin Havel, governor of the Karlovy Vary Region, the only of the above three Czech regions that also borders on Bavaria.
A framework Czech-German agreement on cross-border cooperation of rescue services was signed by the two countries´ health ministers in 2013.
rtj/dr/kva
