Should Ireland respond faster to world disasters?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Last week's earthquake in Venezuela has brought untold devastation to the capital Caracas and beyond. And there are thousands of people who are still missing. My next guest is asking whether Ireland should have a rapid response emergency medical team to help respond to these sorts of disasters. And he's with me here in the studio, Dr. Gabriel Fitzpatrick, Director of the International Clinic Dublin, Consultant in Public Health Medicine and former Chair of Medicines on Frontier Ireland. You're very welcome. Thank you for being with us. Good morning.
What recent disaster prompted the discussion about Ireland's response?
So what would this team look like? What is it?
Well, an emergency medical team, it's made up of staff, ideally HSE staff. They have training and they have equipment and they're able to deploy within 72 hours and ideally accredited by the World Health Organisation. Now, lots of European countries have deployable emergency medical teams, countries of similar size to Ireland, such as Norway. And lots of those teams are deployed at the moment in Venezuela. And an emergency medical team is something Ireland has both the personnel and the capacity to build. Because Ireland's very generous. We give lots of money for overseas aid. We've already given, I hear there's a million euro has been given for the International Red Cross in Venezuela. Another million euro was given by the government to the Venezuelan Humanitarian Fund.
But what I've noticed and I've worked in various places across the world is that Every time you work in one of those places where disaster strikes, people thank you for turning up. There is a power in turning up when disaster strikes. Now, Ireland is very good at signing checks, at giving funding and so forth. But there is that capacity there within Ireland and within the staff we have. be able to turn up using an emergency medical team to assist on site.
Is that not what Medicines on Frontier does? Correct.
There are lots of NGOs in Ireland and lots of NGOs in Europe and they go all over the world and they help out. But some NGOs are good, are very good. Some NGOs are not so good. But we know from talking to other EMTs that health services for a country, they benefit by having an emergency medical team. It brings those individuals who work in various NGOs under the same umbrella. We can guarantee their training. We can guarantee their safety. And it's not that emergency medical teams are just for helping people in disaster zones.
So they're working away, doing their regular day to day job and then they would get the call up.
What would an emergency medical team in Ireland look like?
Exactly. And we, Ireland, our health service would benefit from it as well. So we know from working in the health service that people who deploy and work for several weeks or several months abroad, when they come back, they're happier. And when you have happy health care staff, you have better patient care. And an emergency medical team is not something that is just deployed abroad. We can never say that there may be an emergency in Ireland, some disaster that we did not think of. And then that emergency medical team would be available for Ireland, could help out on site.
Yeah, I know. Look, it sounds like a great idea, but there is fallout from that because you're taking people out of the health service to do the job and you have to do the backfill and all of the rest. And already I have people saying we can't look after our own people. You know, how much of a problem does it create?
True. So when we talk about our health service, there's over 150,000 staff in our health service, a budget of almost 28 billion euro. It's a massive institution in our country. But when I talk about, or when we talk about an emergency medical team, a type one team, it would take about 20 staff to run it. And those 20 staff would not be taken from one clinic or one hospital and shut that clinic down. It might be a doctor from a hospital in Dublin, a nurse from a hospital in Galway, a logistician from a clinic in Donegal. It would take staff spread out across the country.
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