Developing a Pre-Hospital Emergency Care System

Uganda has a high incidence of road traffic accidents and high mortality rates, yet lacks a mature prehospital emergency care system. The prognosis of both medical and trauma emergencies can be significantly improved if proper care is initiated early enough, which can be on the scene or during transportation to the hospital. Uganda like many other low- and middle-income countries, still significantly lack adequate emergency medical services coverage, a problem compounded by a profound deficit of first responder training programs. In hopes of addressing this critical gap in the Ugandan’s healthcare workforce,  Global Emergency Care (GEC) continues to create and implement innovative, Uganda-specific prehospital care provider training programs, providing education scholarship programs Emergency Care Technicians (EMTs), advocacy for emergency care and capacity building short trainings in emergency care management for healthcare workers. In the past few months, GEC has provided 57 tuition scholarship to Emergency Medical Technicians at three Health training institutes in Uganda

The Ugandan government has committed to adding over 1,000 new ambulances by 2026. To meet this expansion, Global Emergency Care (GEC) is working to train and deploy the Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) workforce that will staff these vehicles and strengthen emergency care nationwide, GEC has since supported the first cohort of 57 students — drawn from leading health training institutions including the Lubaga Health Training Institute , Nsambya Training health Institute and Gulu school of health sciences with study scholarships for the 2025–2026 academic year. Our goal is to double this number in the following year, ensuring that more communities gain access to lifesaving pre-hospital care.