Specialist training is helping Egyptian paramedics and first responders deliver life-saving care to pregnant mothers, newborn babies and wounded children evacuated from Gaza, Save the Children and Community Jameel announced after a first round of training concluded in Cairo.
The training will rapidly scale up preparedness, including in safeguarding for children and adults and psychological first aid and self-care. Save the Children, with support from Community Jameel, is providing intensive training for paramedics facing a humanitarian emergency where patients have suffered deprivation, trauma and catastrophic injuries.
The first round of training, which featured simulation sessions for first aid interventions during humanitarian crises and emergency responses, was delivered to 30 paramedics. A further 90 paramedics are expected to receive training as the programme continues. Save the Children is working in Egypt with the Ministry of Health and the Egyptian Ambulance Authority.
The training is part of a package of measures for the Gaza response announced by Save the Children and Community Jameel in November 2023. This also includes delivering paediatric and maternal medical equipment and supplies to frontline Save the Children staff in Gaza and the ambulance service in Egypt.
George Richards, director of Community Jameel, said: “Egyptian paramedics, ambulance workers and other first responders are under immense strain in meeting the critical needs of pregnant mothers and newborn babies, including preterm babies, who have been evacuated through the Rafah crossing to Egypt on urgent medical grounds. With Community Jameel’s funding, Save the Children is bringing its world-leading expertise on child safeguarding and psychological wellbeing to support Egyptian colleagues and to ensure that Palestinian mothers and children receive the best care possible.”
The package of measures will also support remotely training and equipping up to 100 clinical staff in Gaza to provide specialist treatment and care to up to 100,000 children suffering from blast injuries; and supplying 1,000 stop-the-bleed packs to enable first responders in Gaza to treat children’s blast injuries. The death toll from the Gaza conflict is now reported to be more than 11,000 children. Surviving children and their families are met with increasingly catastrophic conditions in the face of the crisis. This training will equip medics to better respond to injuries on the ground and alleviate some of the community’s suffering.
The work on children’s blast injuries is in collaboration with the Centre for Paediatric Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College London, which was jointly launched in March 2023 by Save the Children and Imperial.
In December 2023, Community Jameel announced its support for the centre’s work at a meeting with Professor Anthony Bull, director of the centre and professor of musculoskeletal mechanics at Imperial, Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a surgeon who was until recently operating at Al Ahli hospital in Gaza before he was evacuated, and other members of the centre’s team.
