St Johns Ambulance visit – Eric Balvert and Annette Lovich.
Eric thanked Rotary for the invitation to talk to us. He briefly outlined the history of St Johns Association having started in NZ in 1850. Nowadays it is found in nearly every town in NZ and is 80% staffed by volunteers. Annually it cost about 350 million to run across all of NZ and this cost is met by donations and subscriptions as well as 80% funding from the government.
St John’s receives and responds to a phenomenal number of calls and these are increasing annually. A huge increase in demand occurred during Covid and this has not really abated, rather it is increasing. Morrinsville receives a lot of calls for the elderly, cardiac chest pains, Covid related illness, infections some going into septic state.
Morrinsville has 2 ambulances, one of which is used for event duty but is also a backup vehicle, when needed. At times there can be up to 4 ambulances in Morrinsville at once. All close by towns help each other out as needed.
Of real concern is the wait time that is occurring at Waikato hospital, often 2 – 2 1/2 hours.
St John’s services are divided into 2 areas, Operations (ambulance response) and Community, which includes first aid courses, Medical alarms, AED kits health shuttles and the like. A recent addition is a Welfare truck which supplies coffee, muffins, soup etc. for people in ED. This addition was donated by one woman in Tokoroa, and is supported weekly though the generosity of service clubs and Subway.
In Morrinsville our St Johns are looking to the future, having purchased adjacent land to the existing building to build a new station. In time they hope to get the help of service clubs, raising funds and helping with the work involved.
A new development is a LOCK BOX which will house the AEDs so that they can be place outside buildings and will give a caller the code to get into them. An excellent development costing $564.00 each. Services clubs may need to work together to ensure those funded give an even distribution throughout the town.