Healthcare initiative launched to help in remote areas in Oman

Energy Tuesday 12/February/2019 20:33 PM
By: Times News Service
Healthcare initiative launched to help in remote areas in Oman

Muscat: A group of volunteers have begun an initiative, which involves them visiting remote and mountainous villages sans access to health care services to teach the residents first-aid skills. The initiative, called “Eblal”, means healing in Arabic. “We aim to improve the basic health knowledge of the residents by teaching them first-aid skills and how to deal with common conditions such as pressure, diabetes, and fractures and how to treat them quickly before taking the patient to the nearest hospital, which takes about an hour,” said Qais Al Jedyani, the head of the volunteers committee in the Eblal team.
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A team of 17 students from different colleges across the Sultanate, accompanied by medical staff, travelled a distance of 250 kilometres to reach a mountain village located in north Al Sharqiyah Governorate.
Al Jedyani said: “The Eblal team organised the first voluntary trip to Hail Al Makarem village, which is located in the north of Al Sharqiyah Governorate in the wilayat of Dima W’aattayeen, in order to raise awareness over first aid methods among the people of the area.”
The residents face difficulty in reaching the hospital due to the rugged geographical nature of the area, and the nearest hospital is about 50km away from the village.
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“The medical team has taught the residents how to deal with pressure and diabetes machines and the signs of these cases, in addition to teaching them first-aid skills and distributing about 27 first-aid boxes to each house in the village,” Al Jedyani said, adding, “The team will also organise a number of follow-up trips to these villages to examine the health condition of the residents and provide them with guidance on the right way to deal with their problems.”
The residents of the village expressed their gratitude over the initiative, as it would help them save the lives of a lot of people.
Ahmed Al Handhali, an elderly man from Hail Al Makarem village, said: “This initiative is very important and we will benefit from it because it taught us how to deal with different situations instead of moving the patient across long distances without knowing the nature of his/her pain.”
“We are worried and pray throughout the trip to the hospital because sometimes, when we reach the hospital,we find the patient has already passed away, so knowing first aid will help us intervene quickly and that will save the lives of many patients and our beloved in the village,” Al Handhali added.
Stating that the team needs more support and volunteers to cover more remote villages and increase the number of visits, Al Jedyani said: “In the future, we hope to have representative teams in all the governorates of the Sultanate to do the same task and we welcome everyone who would like to contribute to and volunteer in the Eblal initiative.