Emergency medical services - poor response time in the rural Eastern Cape

Abstract

Emergency medical services (EMS) throughout South Africa are of unequal quality owing to historical population inequalities and under-resourced EMS in rural areas. There are no data regarding the quality of ambulance services in the rural Eastern Cape. The assessment of EMS is not easy, but an assessment tool has been established. We prospectively audited the response time to ambulance requests from a community health centre in the rural Eastern Cape.