Twelve tense hours with Kenya Red Cross rescue team

Lights flicking and sirens blaring, we unnervingly speed down the road, snaking through the heavy city traffic. Adrenaline-filled and teeth clenched, the day was moving quite fast for us.

My colleague, photojournalist Govedi Asutsa, and I have covered disasters, but riding with a medical emergency response team was different. Sitting in the front cabin with the driver worsened the situation. I hate speed, but this is not the common reckless speeding; it is a life-saving mission.

“Belt up Joy,” advises Amran Jumanne, an emergency medical technician behind the wheel.

On this Friday, we arrive at the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) offices in South C an hour earlier just to make sure we are set for what we had been cautioned could be hair-raising for the inexperienced. A warm cup of tea was a great start to beat the anxiety of the 12-hour-shift ahead.

At 2.35pm, we are embedded with Jumanne and Cyril Mulindi, a paramedic, to respond to a workplace incident in South C where a worker had collapsed after lunch.

As we take the steps from the first-floor office, it is more than the brisk steps one would think we are taking...it is a running match to the ambulance.

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At 2.41pm, my colleague and Mulindi settle at the back of the ambulance. I sit next to Jumanne, who is taking cues from a radio call and receiving updates on the status of the patient. His multi-tasking mastery is admirable. 

Despite the traffic, five minutes later we arrive at the institution to find anxious colleagues surrounding the patient. Their relief at the sight of the KRCS team is palpable.

Mulindi and Jumanne are informed that the patient has been taken to a separate office and was having breathing difficulty and complaining of a splitting headache.

And from then on they take charge. They advise that only two staff remain in the room for fresh air. 

Jumanne explains that for most cases, the KRCS has adopted the ‘stay and play’ response strategy where the patient is stabilised on site before transportation.

“My name is Cyril and this is my colleague Jumanne from the KRCS and we are here to help. Where is the pain most aggressive?” Amid heavy breathing, the patient says she has a heavy headache. 

Meanwhile, her colleagues call her husband, and since he is not within Nairobi, he instructs that her sister who is nearby be called. The sister arrives just in time as the patient is being rushed to Nairobi West Hospital.

“Belt up, Joy,” once again, the now-all too familiar words come from Jumanne. Shrieking past traffic, at moments I close one eye in fear of ramming other cars and I keep the other open to ensure I am still alive.

The deft hands of Jumanne drive us through the mad rush, weaving through the craze of city drivers; not even the blare of the siren will make some give way. A few good ones make room; other eccentric ones even dare veer into the space from their stagnant lane. Cheeky ones take advantage and drive behind. Ten minutes later we are at the hospital.

When the admission formalities are complete, we head back to the Kenya Red Cross office to await another emergency call.

Dispatch team

Emergency Operations Officer Nicholas Thuo had earlier in the day taken us through the Emergency Operations Centre. We are taken through the basics of a life support (BLS) ambulance and how different it is from the Advanced Life Support (ALS) one.

Nairobi County has six KRCS response teams at Ngong, Mombasa, Jogoo and Thika roads, Uhuru Park and in the Central Business District.

“We work 7am to 7pm for the day-shift and 7pm to 7am for the night shift for three days and rest for another three days,” says Ann Lily Mbao, the paramedic on duty at the Emergency Medical Dispatch Centre where patients’ details are recorded.

Our chat is cut short by a distress call from a female caller requesting an ambulance to a facility where she can have an ultrasound taken for a dislocated lumbar, lower back region.

Ann says that as a trained nurse, taking medical history of the caller provides an accurate brief for the medical dispatch team.

Another distress call of an expectant woman comes through. Ann assures the caller that the medical dispatch team will be sent right away. From the explanation, she suspects cervix failure to expand.

Ann is confident that her colleagues will facilitate delivery. And the calls keep coming in. In one instant, Ann’s colleague guides a caller to stabilise a 70-year-old patient whose blood glucose has dropped and requires emergency medical treatment.

Teresiah Maina, another staff, notes that pre-hospital care is an essential part of treatment in many acute diseases and trauma.

BLS is medical care given to ensure patient’s vital organs functions until the patient has been transported to appropriate medical care whereas ALS is defined as invasive life-saving procedures including all procedures of BLS but including advanced airway management, infusions and medications given through the veins, monitoring of the heart and interpretation and other procedures conventionally used at the hospital level.

With 64 branches in the 47 counties, he points out that the emergency operations centre works with government, the fire brigade, the Army, NGOs and other bodies during a disaster. The centre set up seven years ago is also home to a response team manning their social networking tools on Facebook, Twitter and SMS alerts and the 1199 emergency hotline code.

“We are expected to coordinate and respond to emergencies within the golden hour determined by the time a call is made, the information given and the dispatch of an ambulance,” says Thuo.

Ambulance teams include an operator and a paramedic, both trained in Emergency Medical techniques.

“Our safety comes first and has to be guaranteed,” notes Thuo adding that the staff have been taken through courses to assess the environments they work in to ensure they are not in harm’s way. And in the rush to help persons in distress, the staff have their down times.

“Onlookers crowd the scene thus making our work more difficult,” he notes.

As noted, some motorists do not give the ambulances priority making navigation difficult against a patient’s life that relies on getting to hospital within the expected critical time.

“A recent incident disturbed my mind until I shared it with a colleague because a patient died in our ambulance as we were taking him to the hospital, prompting us to drive towards the next police station to register the death and later to the mortuary,” Jumanne says.

He notes that the toughest part of the job is telling a loved one that his/her patient died on way to hospital if the unfortunate happens.

As we settle back at the KRCS Headquarters, it is time to grab late lunch and as the team working in the night shift reports at 7pm, we keep them company for another three hours and at 10pm my colleague and I call it a day after being part of the team for 12 hours.