Bill would help children in need

The week of May 17-24 is National Emergency Medical Services Week, and what better time for our community to urge our legislators to vote in favor of the Wakefield Act (H.R. 479), which supports Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMS-C). I thank U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop of Georgia's 2nd Congressional District for co-signing this important measure.

The federally funded EMS-C was developed in the mid-1980s to address a gap between adult and pediatric emergency care. The gap is closing as the EMS-C's Advisory Councils focus on ensuring that EMS providers and emergency staff have access to the education, knowledge and skills needed to properly care for children in emergency situations.

Presently the EMS-C Advisory Council for East Central Georgia Region VI is working to get appropriately sized equipment for infants and children in all ambulances. At the same time, the Georgia EMS-C Advisory Council is developing a system to identify emergency departments that are capable of treating pediatric patients.

The Augusta community is fortunate to have robust health care that includes the MCG Health Children's Medical Center, a tertiary care children's hospital and the region's only hospital with a Level I Pediatric Trauma Center. But the majority of Georgia's 2.5 million children do not have access to the type of specialized pediatric emergency care that we have in Augusta.

Give these children better chances for survival in a medical or traumatic crisis. Support the Wakefield Act and continue the EMS-C grant program.

Natalie Lane, M.D.

(The writer is medical director of the MCG Health Children's Medical Center Emergency Department and the section chief of pediatric emergency medicine; and chairman of the EMS-C Advisory Council, East Central Georgia Region VI.)