The Polish Emergency Medical Team of the Polish Center for International Aid (EMT PCPM) arrived in Addis Ababa to give assistance.
The team that arrived in the framework of the WHO Emergency Teams Initiative, at the invitation of the Ministry of Health of Ethiopia came on September 22 and will stay until October 18, currently supporting the operations of the Millennium COVID Care Centre.
Hilina Tadesse, Chief of Staff, Director General of Medical Services General Directorate, Ministry of Health of Ethiopia expressed appreciation for the cooperation between the EMT PCPM and the Millennium COVID Care Centre.
Millennium Covid care center is the largest such center in the country with 1000 bed capacity. Running it poses challenges for design, flow management, staff capacity development, infection prevention management and delivery of care said Dr Ishmael Shemsedin, Executive Director of Millennium COVID Care Centre. “So far we have provided service for more than 3000 patients. In our effort to provide high quality care, inadequate experience in critical care and emergency response management has been rate limiting,” he added.
“This is the sixth mission of Polish Emergency Medical Team PCPM in response to COVID-19 pandemics,” says Wojtek Wilk (PhD), leader of the Team. “We are happy to share with our Ethiopian colleagues not only the experience from the Polish hospitals, but also that acquired by our EMT during recent missions to Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Lebanon and Madagascar. Our EMT will be also supported by a doctor and a nurse from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet, which will add one more country experience to share”.
First deployment of the Polish Emergency Medical Team PCPM was to Italy, where it supported an Intensive Care Unit in a city of Brescia in March 2020. Later, it was deployed by the WHO on training and capacity-building missions to two countries of Central Asia: Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Since last August, Polish doctors supported two state-run hospitals for COVID patients in Lebanon, while three Polish medical workers were deployed on WHO surge mission to Madagascar. In Poland, the Emergency Medical Team actively supported hospitals, among others setting up COVID triage areas in front of hospital emergency departments.
“The project showed once again how much the Government of Poland was dedicated to support countries around the world in dealing with the pandemic. These days, international solidarity is especially needed,” said Przemyslaw Bobak, Ambassador-designate of Poland to Ethiopia.