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  • 'Just stop the bleeding': The first-aid training officers used to save lives in Austin's mass shooting

    Since 2014, all Austin police officers and cadets receive first-aid training, including the use of tourniquets and CPR. The training, which covers four weeks for cadets, is meant to provide stopgap, life-saving aid when more highly trained medics cannot reach the scene of a mass shooting quickly enough. Gunshot victims can bleed to death quickly, making the speed of the response paramount. Police provided such aid to multiple victims of a June 12, 2021, mass shooting, including transporting people in police vehicles to hospitals. The response is credited with saving lives.

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  • In Sokoto, emergency ambulances tackling maternal mortality

    A program in Sokoto State uses 300 ambulances to improve access to emergency care in rural areas, which has significantly improved maternal health outcomes. High costs, limited availability of transportation, and traditional gender norms limited women’s access to care, but the program has made it easier to reach care, and more interactions with health facilities helped shift norms about maternal care. Routine immunizations, prenatal care, and nutrition services have also increased. Committees, made up of local leaders and healthcare officials, maintain the vehicles and provide drivers in each ward.

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  • Volunteer paramedics patrol streets of Venezuela's capital

    With Venezuela's hospitals and ambulance services crippled by the country's long-running economic and social crisis, a volunteer corps of paramedics formed two years ago to respond to medical emergencies. With donated labor and medical supplies, along with charitable funding, Angels of the Road handles three or four emergency calls per day, mostly auto accidents. Research shows that speedy and expert trauma care saves lives. This service fills a gap in a country where many cannot afford private ambulance services, and public services lack the resources to be fully functioning.

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  • Hope from the Pulpit: The church easing transport woes for Malawi's riverine pregnant women

    David Gordon Memorial Hospital, owned and run by the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian Synod of Livingstonia, bought two ambulances to transport pregnant women to health clinics for free. Malawi has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world and women living in rural areas must travel long distances at great expense to reach well-equipped care. Since 2017, the seven-seat ambulance speedboat has ferried 861 pregnant women and a road ambulance has transported 1,000 women to the hospital. Nonprofits help support the ambulances’ operating costs, which can be high, especially the speedboat.

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  • Next Step goes to the front lines of gun violence in Minneapolis, starting with the shooting victims

    Next Step is a hospital-based violence intervention program based at Minneapolis' Hennepin County Medical Center that counsels gunshot victims to try to help lower the chances that they will be harmed again or seek to harm others. Focusing on young adults and their families, the program starts its work when a victim is hospitalized. The counseling and connections to support services can continue for months and even years.

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  • The spacesuits saving mothers' lives

    Doctors have created a pressure garment that prevents women from dying from obstetric hemorrhage during childbirth. Modeled after the NASA spacesuit, the product was far from ideal when first envisioned in 1969 and went through several iterations over many years. Now, the garment has been successfully tested with a 50 percent reduction in mortality rate and is used around the world.

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  • How paramedics can help keep older Ontarians healthy — and out of the ER

    A program started in Hamilton, Ontario that allows paramedics to "hold routine drop-in sessions at social-housing buildings, at no cost to residents" has expanded throughout the entire country after reporting notable success as a health benefit. Although funding for the program isn't certain, the program thus far has helped keep seniors and low-income residents out of emergency rooms and long-term care facilities and has further helped reduce feelings of isolation during the pandemic.

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  • Street medic crew forms out of BLM protests in metro Phoenix

    As protests spread across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, some protesters saw the need for street medics to tend to injured protestors. They formed Desert Action Medical Network and remained on the sidelines to administer medical attention at over 80 protests in Phoenix. The medics packed backpacks full of supplies to treat wounds from tear gas, rubber bullets, and pepper spray projectiles, and treated protestors when violence broke out. “Somehow medicine just became the best use of our skills for this movement.”

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  • How Portland Protesters Keep Each Other Safe

    Behind the nightly protests against racism and police brutality on Portland's streets for more than five months stands a network of street medics and mutual aid groups dedicated to equipping and protecting protesters, and treating their injuries after clashes with police. Portland's already-vibrant street medic community responded to the policing protests with emergency medical care. Their work, plus that of other mutual aid groups, has taken on an added dimension during the pandemic, with masks and hand sanitizer added to the list of supplies.

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  • Summit Safe Syringe Exchange ‘plants just a little bit of hope' through harm reduction

    The Summit Safe Syringe Exchange provides free and clean needles and supplies to people who use drugs, while also providing access to testing and counseling and connecting people to housing and health care resources. Project DAWN saturated the community with naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, and trains community members to recognize and treat overdoses quickly. Both programs have helped the Summit County Public Health integrate harm reduction strategies into the ways that officials address drug use and addiction.

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