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30 January 2002 By Marvin Hidalgo, Costa Rican Red Cross, in San José Time is precious and information saves lives - the motto of the Costa Rican Red Cross, which is positioning itself at the cutting edge of telecommunications technology in the Central American region. To significantly reduce the time between an emergency call and a patient receiving 'pre-hospital care' - the service for which the Red Cross is best known - has long been a real priority for the society. Now a generous donation from the Japanese people and the inauguration of a new communications centre has brought realization of this goal much closer. This new technology, just brought in by the national society, will help the telecommunications section be faster and more flexible in responding to emergency requests. It will also help to deploy relief personnel with radio support from the communications centre. "We are breaking with the traditional system," says Jorge Rovira, head of the telecommunications unit. "We had 14 radios managed by three operators who were the link between the patient and the national society. In some cases the radio operators were forced to make split-second decisions about which calls to put first." The Costa Rican Red Cross hopes many things will change with the use of this new technology. Radio operators will now be able to access more channels and frequencies. To the potential beneficiaries, this means that the national society will be able to increase the speed of response, deploy relief units and provide support for each unit at the same time. This support will be either for pre-hospital requests or for special relief operations, including floods, landslides, search and rescue missions, road accidents and plane crashes. "With this equipment, we will be able to link the whole country with the integrated radio system the Red Cross has," says Jorge Rovira. "It will also facilitate radio conferences during disaster preparedness work and in actual disasters, help us monitor different parts of the country - in short, give us radio contact coast to coast and border to border and links with the Panamanian and Nicaraguan Red Crosses." This is expected to be invaluable in major emergencies, but the main benefit is simply in reducing the response time to emergency requests. "New technology won't solve all our problems in emergencies," says Miguel Carmona Jiménez, the president of the Costa Rican Red Cross. "Emergency response units and a maintenance budget are also vital." The telecommunications capacity of the Costa Rican Red Cross countrywide is now 85% - a significant increase over the last survey. The remaining 15% will be covered by relay stations in strategic locations. The $100,000 Japanese donation was topped up by $23,000 from the national relief and operations office of the Costa Rican Red Cross itself. "With this donation, Japan becomes our major donor - and through our ability now to offer a much better emergency service the people of Costa Rica are the direct beneficiaries," according to Miguel Carmona Jiménez. |
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