Gibeon to get its own ambulance

The Gibeon Village Council is set to budget for an ambulance for the town during the 2015/16 financial year. Gibeon Constituency Councillor Jeremias Gregory van Neel confirmed this yesterday. This will ease the dire transport needs of patients, most of whom have no other means of transportation to a local health centre. Gibeon has been without an ambulance for close to 25 years, and had to be serviced by an ambulance from Mariental - some 60km away. This meant that residents struggled to get to the clinic for emergency treatment. Anna Lukor one of the residents of Gibeon told Nampa last week that the town had its own ambulance before independence, but that no ambulance was available for their use after independence in 1990. She said there was a time when her expecting daughter was about to go into labour, but they had to walk to the nurse's house and woke her up to assist them. “We need our own ambulance, we are tired of suffering and waiting for the transport to come from other places,” she said. She said the two nurses currently at their clinic are very helpful and they are doing a great job, but the absence of an ambulance to serve the clinic often hampers their service delivery. Van Neel said the provision of an ambulance at Gibeon clinic is long overdue. “I hope very soon Gibeon will receive its own ambulance to transport and attend to the patients immediately in times of emergency,” he said. He said the ambulance the community had is broken down long time ago and it was out dated and not up to standard. He added that they could not fix it because it might cost a lot of money to get fixed therefore it is better to just opt for a new ambulance. A total of 3 500 people currently live in Gibeon village. GIBEON NAMPA