St John Ambulance and Pacific International Hospital (PIH) have come on board to provide their services during the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in November of this year.
The various trips and meetings by the FIFA medical team to the country culminated to the signing of a service agreement with the two medical organisations yesterday.
Local Organising Committee (LOC), Chief Executive Officer, Seamus Marten said in order to meet FIFA requirements and standards, the LOC will be purchasing medical equipment to provide to St John to use.
"St Johns has been a long-time supporter of football in Papua New Guinea so we feel this acknowledgement is appropriate from the football family.
“The tournament will leave behind a legacy and one of them is through the purchase of medical equipment that will be used by St John for the general public after the tournament,” said Marten.
During the tournament, St John will provide the command and control centre from the operations base at Three-Mile.
They will also provide nine Australian paramedics and 60 volunteers to provide services to the teams and spectators at both the match and training venues, including team hotels.
PIH on the other hand will be providing two fully equipped emergency ambulances to operate at the venues on match days.
Marten said PIH will also be on stand-by for emergency calls if required.
"The ambulances, nurses and first aiders from these medical emergency service providers will be on standby to deal with emergency cases from the training fields and also at the match venues during the matches.
"Besides St John and the Pacific International Hospital, a section from the Port Moresby General Hospital’s emergency department will be dedicated to deal with any emergency cases that are brought in by St John," said Marten.