Emergency kits prepare St John for worst

St John staff in the South will be prepared for almost any scenario in a few weeks, after taking delivery of 16 large blue bins that will each hold enough supplies to triage 10 people in a mass injury emergency.

The bins will be packed with 60kg worth of supplies, including a multiple-head oxygen mask. They will be known as mass casualty incident (MCI) kits.

They will be packed next week and delivered to about half of St John's southern region rural stations.

Dunedin and Invercargill will receive their own urban MCI kits next month, with enough supplies to triage up to 50 patients at a time, in preparation for Rugby World Cup games next year.

St John southern region operations manager Doug Third said those kits were funded by the Ministry of Health, but the rural MCI kits were funded by a $50,000 grant from gaming trust The Trusts Charitable Foundation.

The kits were developed by the South Island branch of St John and the southern region was the first to have multiple MCI kits.

Although large-scale emergencies were rare , it was well worth being prepared to deal with a large number of patients, Mr Third said.

An ambulance could care for up to five patients, but with a MCI kit up to 15 people could be triaged.

Examples of multiple-casualty incidents (MCI) that might happen at any moment were a school-bus accident, a tour bus or boat accident, or a fire, explosion or other catastrophe affecting a building or event where many people were present.

More funding was already being sought to purchase the remaining 13 kits so there was one at every ambulance station in the southern region.