They have three stations - their Headquarters are in the Cebu City, the Cebu City Sports Complex and in Lapulapu City. They also have bases in other locations.
They have 32 full time Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) staff, 152 EMT volunteers; 26 comms personnel; 10 operational staff and are supported by 60 doctors and 6 lawyers.
For vehicles they have 6 ambulances, 3 trauma vans, 3 fire trucks, and three other vehicles. They can also call upon a helicopter if required.
In 1999 they attended 3971 calls for an ambulance, 117 medical back-up events, 372 other emergency calls such as rescue and fire etc and took part in 4276 training sessions in safety promotion and disaster preparation for the local villages.
ERUF
ERUF is the Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation of Cebu City, on Cebu Island in the Philippines.
To our knowledge it is one of the few ambulance and rescue services that gives its services to the people free of any charge even if they have no insurance and cannot afford to pay. Most privately owned services in the Philippines seem to be insurance company based.
In 2000 and again in 2003/4 the Chairman of FIESTA went to Cebu and met with those that run ERUF. He has always been impressed with the dedication, commitment and professionalism of all those involved.
"ERUF saves and mitigates the loss of lives and properties against accidents and calamities through the setting up of a nationwide network that competently provides emergency medical, rescue and pre-hospital care, rehabilitation of services, as well as training programmes that can effectively respond to the needs of the community"
ERUF has built a training centre at its Headquarters in the Cebu. The Training Centre is being provided to supply an improved facility for those that ERUF train. It is hoped that this Training Centre may become the central facility for the whole of the Philippines, training ambulance, rescue and fire staff from all over the islands. FIESTA support them in this project.
The Chairman returned at Christmas 2003 and met again with those running the service including the Board of Directors. A programme of training is to be established to bring ERUF trained EMT staff up to the British standard. See below for details of the training envisaged.
Chairman with Board of Directors
Training envisaged for ERUF over the next twelve months (July 2004 onwards)
July 2004 - Basic driver trainer course held in Cebu - COMPLETED
September 2004 - Senior Ambulance Trainer to go to Cebu to assess the service and its training facilities to look at the provision of a syllabus for a 'Train the Trainers' course. - COMPLETED
2005 - Three trainers to go to Cebu to conduct the Train the Trainers Course.
2005 - A Driver trainer to go to Cebu to conduct an advanced driving course for ERUF staff to British Standard
2005 - ERUF trainer to come to the UK to take part in training with the at the Fire & Rescue Training Centre in Avonmouth, Bristol
2006 - Trainers to go to Cebu from UK and USA to conduct final training to bring ERUF trainers up to UK EMT Standard
If you have any equipment which could be sent to the Philippines to assist ERUF and the other services they are helping please contact the Chairman
If you know of an ambulance service in the Philippines that provides its services free of charge to the population irrespective of their ability to pay, please make this known to the Chairman
ERUF HELPS OTHERS
ERUF has started to run courses for other Ambulance Services in the Philippines from their training centre in Cebu.
A team of staff from a newly formed Ambulance Service in Floridablanca, Pampanga have visited the training centre in Cebu to complete a course in Basic Response. Part of FIESTA's aim is that ERUF will become a centre from which other services can learn and build new services across the Philippines
