COLUMBIA, SC (WLTX)-- Karen Moore is a coordinator for DHEC's EMS Children's Program.
She says in some rural areas EMS agencies don't have the proper equipment to quickly respond to children.
"We kind of went through and found the rural counties and we kind of focused on those a little bit. And we also found the ones that had rural pediatric calls recently. We pulled the data on that and found out how many deaths have been in each county and went from there," said Moore.
Which is why Calhoun County is one out of 12 counties in the state who received pediatric response bags.
"it actually categorizes all of the pediatric equipment by color and its easily accessible. All they do is have to grab it and go," said Moore.
When responding to emergency calls for kids. Calhoun County EMS paramedic Crystal Youmans says now more prepared.
"It gives us a quicker response to an unconscious child when in a cardiac arrest. Drug dosages are already calculated. we just have to pretty much draw them up. As long as we know by the age of the patient the height of the patent we can measure it out to the tapes and give the medications a lot faster", said Youmans.
She also says the standard medication they have on an ambulance is for adults. Before they had the pediatric bags paramedics would have to calculate the proper dosage for the child. Which she says can take up a lot of time during an emergency.
"Now we don't have to calculate those drug dosages. Now we're not having to delay to make sure we got the right dosage. We are not over dosing a patient or under dosing a patient," said Youmans.
When responding to calls Youmans says call paramedics can setup pre-dosages and decrease their response time.
" We have to get it there earlier and faster for the patient. So these bags are going to simplify those drug calculations. So we're not going to have so much stress. Things are already going to be there for that patients age," said Youmans.
