The Civil Defence Commission (CDC), yesterday concluded a one-week long Mass Casualty Manage-ment (MCM) System workshop, from which 29 participants from 10 organisations learnt internationally accredited mass gatherings management techniques.
A release from the Ministry of the Presidency said that participants were taught the principles of mass casualty management in keeping with the PAHO Mass Casualty System. The participants were required to complete a written examination as well as a practical exercise and achieve the 70 per cent minimum pass rate before they were conferred with internationally recognised certificates.
During the one-week training, participants were afforded the requisite knowledge and skills that will allow them to effectively participate in the implementation and maintenance of an MCM system.
The areas of training covered the introduction to MCM, the Alerting Process, Scene Assessment and Reporting, Field Organisation, Communication Techniques in Mass Casualty Incidents (MCI), Principles of First Triage, Second Triage, Planning for Mass Casualty Incidents, Overview of the Incident Command System, Terrorism, Hurricanes and other disasters and First Aid in Disasters.
Director General of the CDC, Colonel (ret’d) Chabilall Ramsarup noted that, training must be continuously provided to representatives of key agencies.
“The way the world is going these days, we’re focusing on risk reduction…What we’ve done the past week is not risk reduction, but risk management.
Why we did that is because even though we want to reduce risk, we also want to be prepared for that risk so we can manage it… We trained you for a specific purpose because if we do have a situation where we have to deploy search and rescue teams, we have trained personnel,” he said.
Ramsarup, according to the release, said that the workshop stemmed from the weaknesses, which were observed at recent large-scale, national events.
“We recognised that we really needed to put some things in place where there is a mass gathering not only in Georgetown, but we will have mass gatherings [on] independence night. All the regions in Guyana will be holding flag-raising [ceremonies] and people will gather en masse. So if something happens in Region Nine, we don’t have to deploy people from Georgetown. People should be trained and we are moving towards that so it will be a country more prepared if [an] incident [does] occur,” he said.
The Director General said that the Government through Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, who has responsibility for the CDC and Disaster Risk Reduction Management and Disaster Response Coordination, has mandated the CDC to ensure that MCM systems are put in place at all major national events in the country.
Whitney Bacchus, a participant, from the Guyana Police Force (GPF), said that the workshop is helpful to participating agencies.
“Over the last few days, one of the things that I have taken away is that preparedness is the most important thing.
If you are not prepared, you cannot respond and save the lives at stake. We have been taught how important it is to be prepared and having your plans and knowing how it ought to be executed. We also learnt how important it is for persons to know and understand their roles so that given any situation, the agency and the individuals would know what is expected of them,” he said.
