Plzen, West Bohemia, July 25 (CTK) – A new rescue centre of the Bavarian Red Cross together with a competence and coordination centre for cross-border health rescue service is opening today in Furth im Wald, Germany, close to the Czech border, Ilona Mauritzova and Pavel Hrdlicka have told CTK.
Mauritzova, dean of the Faculty of Health Care Studies of West Bohemia University, and Hrdlicka, director of the health rescue service of the Plzen Region, said the centre is funded from European funds.
It it is to improve health rescuers’ cooperation, including by training stays, they said.
The faculty is the major coordinator of the project which got almost 17 million crowns from the EU for two years.
“This is one of the most needed projects because our integrated rescue system operates in a rather different way than on the other side (of the border), while we should be able to help one another in the borderland to a ensure high-level care,” Mauritzova said.
The key partner on the German side is the Deggendorf Institute of Technology.
The centre will analyse and compare differences in the technologies, methods and legislation used in order to make it clear who may provide care and how patients and their documentation will be transferred, Mauritzova said.
A similar centre with Saxony is in Karlovy Vary, west Bohemia.
Hrdlicka said the project will culminate with two large exercises. One will be at Rozvadov, west Bohemia, in May 2018, when a mass accident will be simulated. Bavarian rescuers will take part in it.
Last autumn, an agreement between the two rescue forces and health ministries on mutual providing emergency care in the borderland was signed in Karlovy Vary.
“Now, we can act five kilometres deep in the Bavarian borderland if the aid is requested in cases where their rescue service cannot get there,” Hrdlicka said.
He said thanks to EU subsidies, ambulances have been equipped as “small hospitals on the wheels” in the past decade.
