A charity which provide emergency medical care packages to off-duty paramedics and other trained staff in Cavan and Monaghan is to increase supplies to the region. CRITICAL, the emergency medical response charity, in partnership with the National Ambulance Service (NAS), provides vital equipment to emergency medical technicians who are tasked to incidents such as road traffic collisions, cardiac arrests, farming accidents and other medical or traumatic accidents.
Each responder is provided with an Emergency Backpack containing a defibrillator, a resuscitation kit and a medical diagnostic kit. The charity is in the process of expanding that scheme and the number of kit bags being distributed to responders in Cavan and Monaghan is expected to increase to 12.
The first responders are often off-duty ambuslance service staff who volunteer to attend potentially life-threatening emergencies in their local communities. They will respond to these taskings as part of the NAS Staff Off Duty Response Scheme which has been in operation for almost 20 years. It costs the CRITICAL charity approximately Each "emergency backpack" costs the charity approximately €1,500 to equip each volunteer.
