St John Ambulance

St John Ambulance Baruni Opens

The Member for Moresby Northwest, Lohia Boe Samuel, officiated at the ceremony. Present to witness the occasion was Member for Moresby Northeast, John Kaupa, City Manager for NCDC, Bernard Kipit, NCDC Board Council Members, LLG councilors, St. and John Ambulance Commissioner Rigona Rita.

According to Commissioner, Rigona Rita, this is the first time such an important service is opened in the Port Moresby Northwest area and it will cover some of the Motu-Koitabu villages and parts of Central Province.

St. John Unveils Website

In a partnership with Be Pacific Digital Agency, the St John Ambulance website will continue to commitment in conducting ambulance services and introduce e-commerce, where customers can do payment online.

St. John’s is heavily dependent on funding from the community and availing online payment will help generate much-needed funds, because St. John’s social enterprise helps them raise funds to subsidies any funding they get from the PNG Government.

St John Ambulance Service In Namatanai

Following the initial funding of K1.7 million by the Namatanai District Development Authority (NDDA), an annual funding of K800, 000 will be allocated to the ambulance service to cover the three Local Level Governments (LLGs) of Namatamai, Matalai and Sentral Niu Ailan.

DDA Board Chairman and Member for Namatanai, Walter Schnaubelt said it is a pilot project and the DDA is working with St John Ambulance to deliver health services. Based on its outcome, this will be tailored to other LLGs.

Lae ambulance bay launched

The St John Ambulance has attended to six emergency cases so far since commencing operations in Lae last week.

St John will set up operations at the fire station with two fully-kitted ambulances.

This follows the signing of a three-way agreement with the Lae City Authority and Morobe Provincial Health Authority back in December 2020.

SJA acting commissioner and director ambulance service, Rigona Rita, thanked Lae’s fire service chief, acting superintendent, Dennis Hase, for his support in making the initiative happen.

Digicel Foundation launches ambulance

The Foundation and CPHA on Tuesday signed an Ambulance Service Agreement as St John Ambulance also officially launched the first of its new ambulances.

The ambulance is one of the two ambulances donated by Digicel PNG Foundation to St. John Ambulance at the cost of half a million kina. 

The first Land cruiser ambulance will service the people of Central province, it will be sent to the Bereina health centre.

Ambulance officers deployed

This early start is to help the Provincial Health Authority (PHA) with its response to increasing cases of COVID-19.

The advanced deployment team comprises four ambulance officers.

The team is led by Chief Superintendent Anderson Poumb.

Poumb is joined by senior ambulance officer and Community Health Worker Bradley Zuki, and two new recruit ambulance officers.

Two more recruits are expected to join the Lae team this May.

EMT’s Arrive

This comes as seven EMT’s arrived in Port Moresby yesterday to support the St John Ambulance COVID health care.

The team consists of a doctor, four paramedics and two nurses from Johanniter in Germany.

They will be tasked to care for COVID-19 patients with mild to moderate symptoms over the next four weeks.

The trip was organized by the European Union.

St John Ambulance is making sure they are looked after while in PNG.

Ambulance service reports quiet Xmas in NCD

St John Ambulance Director for Operation and Assistant Commissioner, Rigona Rita, said they did not get any calls involving trauma cases.

Commissioner Rita said from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day, the organisation was faced with not more than fifty cases; 10 cases dealt with on Christmas Eve, and 23 on Christmas.

“For this year’s Christmas it has been very quiet, not like previous years where we attended to many trauma cases like stabbing or motor vehicle incidents,” he highlighted.

St John Ambulance to reach ENB

St John Ambulance currently serves the National Capital District and Central Province. However, they now plan to extend their reach to East New Britain Province.

“We have an agreement with East New Britain and we have our officers being trained here in Moresby to go to ENB to set up,” stated CEO of St John’s PNG, Matthew Cannon.

“We are anticipating the receiving of the ambulance station, which is to be donated by Consort Shipping and Curtain Brothers. We would like to start services there as soon as possible.

Partnership with St John Ambulance extended

This has been made possible with PUMA Energy’s contract renewal for a further two years.

St John ambulances travel an average of 300,000km every year to attend to emergencies in some of the remotest parts of Central Province.

PUMA Energy says they were thrilled to have helped St John respond to over 10,000 incidents in the last 12 months since signing their agreement.

Hence they have decided to renew their support commitment contract for a further two years.