Group of volunteers buys GPS units for Melita ambulances

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This article was published 03/01/2018 (2898 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A group of volunteers are helping their local paramedics navigate country roads.

The NXTGen Southwest Group recently purchased five GPS units and eight sets of OilTrax software to equip the remaining ambulances in Melita with another means of getting where they need to go.

The effort serves as a grassroots example of local residents coming together to assist their health-care providers.

“As long as they know how to help us, we can help them find us,” said Danial Forster, secretary of the NXTGen Southwest Group.

Forster said their committee understands the struggles in recruiting doctors to the Melita Health Centre. They understand that deficiencies in the number of physicians can strain the region’s EMS staff, he said.

“It’s now up to our emergency response team to take care of us,” Forster said, “and the more we can support them, the better off everyone is going to be in this area.”

Community members started brainstorming ideas for improvement in 2015, reported the Deloraine Times and Star, when a letter to the editor in the Melita newspaper expressed dismay that it took more than 60 minutes for an ambulance to reach 10 kilometres outside Melita on one occasion.

Concerned that some ambulances are not equipped with GPS systems, Forster sought to equip at least one ambulance with the navigation equipment.

Using GPS mapping software, paramedics can find locations using township system co-ordinates — even where cellphone coverage is poor.

After a successful trail, the NXTGen group, which formed in 2016 with a membership of adults aged 25 and up, fundraised to outfit the rest of Melita’s ambulance fleet.

They acquired GPS units and corresponding software for five ambulances, and purchased the OilTrax software for three other ambulances that were already furnished with GPS systems.

“It’s not going to fix everything,” Forster said. “It’s not going to make it so that response times are faster or anything. It just gives them another tool to do their job.”

Forster was quick to state the GPS system won’t automatically mean first responders will find emergencies faster in every instance. He merely stated local paramedics might choose to use the gadget for help.

He added homeowners could assist paramedics further by ensuring proper signage is visible at the end of every rural driveway.

Ambulances in their region respond to emergencies in the Town of Melita, Municipality of Two Borders, Waskada, Pierson and Deloraine.

“We just want to be able to support our local medical services as much as we can too, whichever way we can. We’re not medical professionals ourselves, but we do understand locating farm sites out here,” Forster said.

Fundraising for GPS is the first major project NXTGen Group has raised money for.

A spokesperson with Prairie Mountain Health said they’re grateful for the generous donation from the local service group, which sought approval to fundraise for navigational help from the health authority before proceeding.

PMH cautioned, however, that ambulances cannot rely on GPS systems alone. Lara Bossert said a large number of provincial back roads are not contained on GPS units.

“Therefore, our ambulances, with the support of Manitoba Transportation Call Centre … use a number of tools to accurately locate the scene of an emergency, including: wall maps, provincial Atlas mapping, the back road map book, well-known landmarks, road identifiers and GPS when available,” she explained in an email.

Forster said NXTGen would send out an opinion survey early this year to local residents to determine where they can be of assistance next.

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