CriticaLink, emergency medical service in Bangladesh

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Saadman Khan Nabil | Published: November 26, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00

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Each and every available figure on national growth suggests that Bangladesh is making a good progress and will head towards a stable economic growth within a short span of time. However, when it comes to meet the basic demands for the citizens of Bangladesh, the progress is dawdling.
Densely populated Bangladesh has been facing a setback with its medical facility and emergency treatment. Bangladesh is yet to have any official service like 911 where people can call and avail emergency medical service. CriticaLink, the only emergency medical service in Bangladesh, was founded in 2014. CriticaLink provides a few of the basic and emergency medical treatment like hemorrhage, triage, burn, cardiopulmonary resuscitation  (CPR) etc.
 In countries like Bangladesh it is estimated that more than 85% of accident victims die before they ever reach the hospitals, many of whom could have been saved if they had quicker admission to fundamental medical care close to the area of the accident. Hence, it is more than essential to have a service of such kind. Now the questions are, 'Why don't we have such service?', 'What are the essentials to build up an emergency service grid?', 'How to ensure sustainability of this service?' and 'How to spread the news regarding the existence of such service to the common people?'
All these questions were asked to the founder of CriticaLink, Dr. Jennifer. Jennifer was a volunteer paramedic for four years. After volunteering for many years, she began teaching cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and emergency medical technician (EMT) classes in her local community. It was in 2012 when she reached Dhaka to aid a trauma surgeon in conducting training sessions in Asia. Since then she had developed the idea of forming a system like the 911 in the US. The initial response was ecstatic from both medical and non-medical students. All these hard working volunteers are unpaid and contain the zeal to thrive for more. According to Jennifer, there is always scope to do better for the country you are living in. Having no official emergency medical service came up as an opportunity for CriticaLink to come into being. But it requires a lot to prolong such service. Jennifer thanks to the passionate volunteers who are eager to learn more and serve.
CriticaLink has already primed a mobile application that will allow volunteers to check for a victim's status and respond as soon as possible. Similarly, a victim can also post regarding an injury. The app itself is also very user-friendly.Thus CriticaLink has been able to secure the 'Winner of the National App Award in the Health and Environment Category' by Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Bangladesh.  According to Jennifer, this is a major leap towards progress and a drop of motivation for the volunteers to fasten their efforts to do more.
Jennifer believes in Bangladesh and the positivity in Bangladeshi people. Flying from over 8,000 miles and settling down to a country where injury, mistreatment are almost like a regular phenomenon, Jennifer comes with a lantern of hope. Developing a healthy emergency medical treatment and response system in Bangladesh and spreading it to the grass root level is indeed a challenge. But it is not impossible. Jennifer and her team are putting all the efforts to take their service to each and every corner of the country. Bangladesh wishes Jennifer and CriticaLink all the very success and calls upon the youth to get acquainted with the emergency rescue training programmes CriticaLink offers and take part in saving lives.

The writer is an MBA student (Marketing), University of Dhaka, saadmankhannabil@live.com