Bahrain Mirror: The Al-Bilad newspaper owned by Ali bin Khalifa, the Prime Minister's son, reported from Health Ministry sources that the number of ambulances at the Al-Salmaniya Medical Complex will be reduced to 7 to meet the needs of all Bahraini areas.

It also stated that only four of these vehicles are specialized for emergency cases, whereas the rest will be used to serve cases of clinical patients who already have appointments or dialysis cases.

The sources added that about 4 to 6 death cases take place each year due to the lack of vacant ambulances to serve these emergency cases.

The sources urged the competent parties to direct the other public hospitals to cooperate with the Al-Salmaniya Complex in order to guarantee that people won't die as a result of the ambulances failing to reach them. They clarified that a lot of these cases start to suffer from contractions then go into coma. These cases need immediate help

. The delay of the ambulance's' arrival will lead to the death of these people who need immediate medical care.

The sources also said that the medical cadre of an ambulance is not enough to serve the emergency cases, as there are only 2 medics in the vehicle; the driver (the medic) and the medic assistant. The medics team used to consist of 3 members before.

The Assistant Undersecretary for Hospital Affairs Dr. Waleed Al-Mane affirmed in a previous statement to the local press last year that the Al-Salmaniya Medical Complex has 22 ambulances and that the cost of equipping each vehicle reaches about 65,000 BD.

Five new ambulances will join the other vehicles in the Al-Salmaniya emergency department and will be delivered to the medical devices department. The total number of vehicles will reach 27, he added.

Al-Mane pointed out that the number of medics in the emergency department of the Al-Salmaniya Medical Complex is about 199; 35 of them are medics, 11 receivers of reports and 61 drivers.

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