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The Red Cross will modernize its assistance at major events. The organization draws hard lessons from an incident that occurred in 2016, in which a runner was killed.
"It's time to change culture," said the new director of the Red Cross, Marieke van Schaik. "The help is getting more and more complicated: because of the increasing number of events, but also because of terrorist threats and extreme weather conditions, we have to adapt to that, we need to better prepare our staff and as an organization, we need to learn better from hard times. " [[19659003] Death
The Red Cross investigated the insufficient assistance provided to a 25-year-old woman, who became ill during the Damlo Dam Tot Dam in Amsterdam in 2016. She died a few days later at the hospital. hospital after a heat stroke.
The Red Cross notes that serious help has been given to the emergency services: the rescuers saw too late that the woman had overheated and recognized the seriousness of the situation. no, they did not cool the woman, but wrapped her in an insulating blanket and called late for professional help. There was also a communication problem with the control room, which took longer for the woman to be picked up by an ambulance.
Risky
Van Schaik does not want to blame the volunteers. "The fault was ours as an organization, these people should have been better trained and did not have the right experience at the finish line, always a risky place in the races to the competition, and they do were not sufficiently informed of the risks of overheating, we are counting on this very hot day. "
After the death of the 25-year-old woman, others failed. The National Red Cross office did not receive any signal of an anomaly during the relief work and did not respond satisfactorily to the critics of the relatives. It was only after repeatedly insisting on the woman's family that the Red Cross opened a thorough investigation. Van Schaik: "The family took it very seriously and we rightly apologized for it and we make sure it never happens again."
Learning [19659004] The nearly 10,000 volunteers of the Red Cross will be informed Saturday of the action plan with which the Red Cross wishes to modernize the emergency services. Van Schaik: "We have thousands of excellent volunteers and, fortunately, we do a lot, but we can not turn a blind eye to things that need to be improved, we do not focus enough on learning mistakes and experiences. "
All Incidents Where help is bad, it must now be found in the management, says Van Schaik. "Then, to think about how we can learn from it, here are the most important lessons of the 2016 event: we need to call on our most experienced staff where the help is most complicated, and we need to better inform our employees of the specific risks of the event where they are located, that it is about high temperatures during an ongoing competition or the emergence of A new drug at a festival. "
Irresponsible
The Red Cross provides first aid for more than 10,000 events a year. and it becomes more and more. According to the new director, the organization must also learn to say "no" better. "We must dare to do that when we feel that the risks are too great, because it's too hot, for example, or because there are so many people that we do not have enough of care providers. " We still have enough volunteers, but that's less. And when the moment comes when something is really irresponsible, we'll have to be honest about it. "
The Red Cross also wishes to improve the provision of information to visitors and participants." People must be well prepared for what they will do: take your clothes when the weather permits, Make sure you are fit enough for what you are going to do, and everyone will know it deep down, but we need to make sure people think about it. "
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