Minister of Public Health Social Development & Labor, Cornelius De Weever the DP appointed minister marked his three year tenure and reflected on the changes and improvements with the Ambulance Department. Courses have been followed and much needed equipment and ambulances have been bought over his three years.
"The community needs to know and have faith in our Ambulance Department. Rest assured much has been done to improve the quality of service being offered by the department to its clients and continuous training, upgrading, monitoring and evaluations will continue"
During the three year period, many information campaigns highlighting the Emergency number 912 have been initiated as a means of educating the community on how to activate the number and what sort of information is required to pass on to the ambulance dispatcher, when necessary care is needed. Within the three year period, much needed equipment was purchased for the department. Some of the equipment was: four portable suction machines, two auto pulse chest compression support pumps, two EZ-glide stair chairs to aid the ambulance team for transport of patients, an alphanumeric paging system and a trauma van for transporting of medical teams and equipment in the event of a large scale accident or disaster. Most recently the voice logging system was also acquired for better recording and quality management of the ambulance department.
Within the three year time span the Ambulance Department participated in an ISPS Code training/exercise on a large scale evacuation drill at AC Wathey Cruise & Cargo facility together with Norwegian Epic Cruise, Port of St. Maarten and the Police Department. The objective of this exercise was to complete ship to shore evacuation exercise, give port authorities and ship experience of shore evacuation, build a better understanding of available resources, exercise medical teams on ship and on shore, understand priorities and the authority of each agency.