Emergencies Handled by the National Ambulance Centre, 2020 Annual Report

The Centre Ambulancier National, the ambulance service of Haiti's Ministry of Public Health and Population, publishes this annual report on the emergencies it handled during 2020. Four pages count the year by case category. It is the annual compilation of the monthly series the service issues under the same masthead.

Obstetric emergencies were by some distance the largest category at 3,965 cases. Road traffic accidents followed at 1,960, then chronic disease of various kinds at 1,554, and a residual category of 1,240 covering malaise, diarrhoea, fever, tuberculosis, anaemia and similar presentations. The service also made 788 transfers for referral and laboratory tests.

2020 was the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the report counts it separately: 732 suspected cases and 277 confirmed, alongside 254 cases of respiratory distress.

Violent injury appears in three lines: 366 stab wounds, 285 gunshot wounds and 188 cases of head trauma. The remaining categories are abdominal pain at 175, febrile syndrome at 119, which the report attributes mainly to food poisoning, and burns at 95.