Pretoria -
Planning a public protest? Then expect to pay to have ambulances and paramedics on standby.
The national Department of Health has written new rules which assess the potential hazard of mass gatherings and order organisers to hire emergency medical services. If the new rules become law, then those who ignore them could face unspecified fines or up to five years in jail.
And they could make political protests very expensive, particularly those involving more than 10 000 people and with opposition expected.
The proposed “Regulations relating to emergency medical services at mass gathering events” were gazetted recently.
Any public comments are due before the end of January, before a final decision is made.
The regulations are aimed at any individual or organisation holding events with a crowd of more than 1 000 people. Even a low-risk event has a list of stringent requirements to ensure safety.
When the event is considered high risk, the “adequate health and medical services must be provided”.
And here's the nasty bit: the event organiser must do all the planning and pay for all the health and medical services for the event. The rules set out how to assess the risk level, to decide what level of service is required.
This is probably the lowest risk event: a “classical performance” for families, held indoors for fewer than 3 000 people, everyone seated, a routine event with no history of problems, less than four hours long, in winter, and less than 30 minutes from a hospital (don’t be tempted to include alcohol or a fireworks display).
That needs a medical post, which can be a temporary facility able to deal with minor ailments and stabilise the ill or injured. This is a bit riskier: a public demonstration or march, going through the streets, with a history of “low casualty rate”, expecting 10 000 people, more than four hours long, in summer, more than 30 minutes from a small hospital.
That would need a medical post, an ambulance with 10 crew (six basic ambulance assistants, one ambulance emergency assistant, one paramedic and two ambulance crew).
A crowd any bigger than 10 000 would push that protest into a riskier category, requiring the ambulance with 12 crew, and a “medical centre” that’s able to “provide stabilisation, symptomatic relief and a certain degree of definitive treatment to ill or injured patients” and a resuscitation area of at least 9 square metres.
The highest-risk event is anything with “opposing factions involved”, followed by a “dance event (rave/disco)”.
But add summer (the riskiest season), anything over 20 000 people, alcohol, helicopters, water, street theatre, and it could be a very expensive event.
Pretoria News
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