
Kurt Maske from Medicare EMR assisting the other services with loading 4 year old Jean-Marie Gardener into the helicopter.
At 12:40pm Sunday 14 October Garth received the call for a 4 year old girl Jean-Marie Gardener that was hit by a vehicle as she and her mother got out of a taxi as she ran across the road.
Garth dispatched Kurt Maske to the scene on the R45 in front of Grand Provence.
Kurt arrived seconds after the Fire department to find her lying in the road with what looked like cerebral spine fluid coming out of her ear indicating possible head trauma.
A Metro ambulance arrived about 7 minutes after and she was loaded into the ambulance. The decision was made to transfer her via helicopter due to the serous nature of her injuries. Metro Air Merry was contacted but was not available at the time so Er24 was contacted and the helicopter was approved within 1 phone call.
The open field by La Vie was allocated as the landing area for the helicopter and she was transported by metro ambulance to the landing site.
As the helicopter landed she suddenly crashed and became unresponsive.She presented with a lot of fluids in her airway and one lung had collapsed. Metro requested to use Medicare EMR’s suction units as theirs was not functioning properly and the fire department did not have one on their vehicle.The suction units were used to clear her airway preventing her from suffocating.They intubated her and she was flown directly to the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital in Cape Town.
If it was not for the 2 suction units that was sponsored by the Lions Club via their annual Lions Club Treasure Hunt last year she would have died there on scene and never have made it to hospital.
The Franschhoek lions club is a great supporter for our work. Every year the Lions club works towards sponsoring much needed medical equipment and consumables that we use at Medicare EMR to service our community.