Bogotá will have 151 new ambulances for emergency care

Bogotá started this week with 151 new ambulances for its citizens. This was highlighted by the mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López. Cars were acquired in order to improve the attention paid to citizens. According to what was detailed by the local administration, it is intended to strengthen security actions against incidents and emergencies in Bogotá. The purchase was made through the District Health Secretariat purchased. The more than 100 cars will be delivered to the four Integrated Health Services Subnets.

“This is another step with which we fulfilled our government program, the one with which citizens chose us in 2019 to have a decent public health service, to improve care, opportunity, time of arrival, the quality of the response we give to the people of Bogotá when they need us to take care of preventively , curative or regular health care,” said the mayor of the capital, Claudia López, from Plaza de Bolívar.

According to what the official explained, this replacement of vehicles will ensure effective care for citizens in terms of pre-hospital care. Likewise, offer quality services for emergencies, disasters or emergencies. The Mayor said that this investment had been high and that it was higher than what was planned. “We intended to buy 128 ambulances, however, thanks to efficient management and a transparent and competitive contracting process, we were able to buy 151 ambulances and reach 80 percent renewal,” he said.

With the purchase of the vehicles, Bogotá now has 817 public and private ambulances for comprehensive emergency care. According to what is highlighted on the mayor's website, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that there be at least one ambulance for every 25,000 inhabitants, the capital exceeds this goal and has one ambulance for every 8,700 inhabitants. 41 ambulances will be for the North Subnet, 41 for Southwest, 35 for South, and 34 for Central East. “This is a way to honor their work,” López said in his speech.

“In addition to the fact that 35 of the ambulances are 4x4 for urban and rural Bogotá, 40 are medicalized. This means that, basically, they are with like an Ambulatory Intensive Care Unit,” explained the local president. The vehicles had a total cost of more than 36 billion pesos. All have a state-of-the-art radio and geo-referencing system that will allow monitoring all ambulance movements, 24 hours a day. The Ministry of Health already has a modern real-time observation screen and a new Emergency Information System, to carry out vehicle checks.

So far, of the 151 ambulances, 10 medicalized ambulances have been delivered and 30 intended for basic care transport. These new Pre-Hospital Care resources will be managed by the city's different Integrated Health Services Subnetworks, as mentioned previously, will then be geo-referenced and located at strategic points in the city's 20 locations. The CRUE Emergency and Emergency Regulatory Center will be responsible for monitoring the daily operation of all ambulances in the district, among its tasks, it will verify the amount of time each one spends to transport patients requesting the service.

According to the Ministry of Health, the purchase of these implements, and the installation of a third repeater antenna, will allow “an optimal connection of the city at the radiotelephone level, for all ambulances, and in general, the health sector and its users”.

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