THUNDER BAY – A decommissioned ambulance has been sent north to Muskrat Dam.
The community, located nearly 600 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, has become the first remote, fly-in community in Ontario to acquire a medical transport vehicle, which local officials say will vastly improve the comfort level of residents requiring medical care.
The vehicle will be staffed by a first responder team and can provide transportation to and from the community airport for patients needing to fly south for treatment, as well as emergency care on the ground.
William Kaminawash, executive director of the Reverand Tommy Beardy Family Treatment Centre of Muskrat Dam, said the vehicle will have a huge impact.
“It helps us with doing our job better and it enhances our programming, especially the safety part of it,’ Kaminawash said.
“I think something like this is going to be very important. In our situation up north, we don’t have anything. The nursing staff, they can’t leave the building to assist. They have to stay there. We only have first-aid training, but we’re going to be doing first responder training next.”
That’s been slowed by COVID-19.
Kaminawash said he’s hopeful the donation of the vehicle by the Rainy River Social Services Board, sparks similar actions elsewhere to help other northern communities acquire medical transport vehicles of their own.
“Getting assistance from Rainy River Social Services, by them donating a really nice medical assist vehicle for us, it shows that there’s caring – not just at the community level, but also from outside,” he said.
The donation was helped along by Buhler-Moore First Aid Service’s Marge Buhler-Moore, who started making phone calls looking for a decommissioned ambulance.
Dan McCormick, chief of emergency medical services in the Rainy River District, suggested she try the RRSSB.
Buhler-Moore said it was pretty clear it was needed, after being told there was no safe way to transport passengers with particularly acute medical conditions. In other communities, she’d heard tales of patients being placed in the back of a pick-up truck to transport.
“It will be equipped in the future with first-response equipment, so it will be a little bit higher medical care than just a first-aider can provide,” she said. “They will be able to now go out into the community if there is a medical illness or if there’s a trauma and provide a little bit more appropriate care if there’s a trauma.
“And they’ll be able to package them up and get them to the nursing station without potentially causing further harm.”
