BY DAYO JOHNSON
AKURE— Ondo State Government, weekend, expressed its readiness to reduce death from road accidents with the inauguration of a scheme called First Aid Skill Treatment, FAST, to train people of the state on proper ways of handling accident victims.

Consequently, forty  change agents selected across the state have been trained on the skill and are expected to traverse the 18 local government areas of the state to replicate the training among the people.

Commissioner for Health in the state, Dr. Dayo Adeyanju, said this at the opening of the training of the change agents in Akure, the state capital.

Adeyanju said the people were being trained on how to give first aid treatment to accident victims.

He said the FAST scheme was part of the emergency services programme packaged by the government to drastically reduce mortality and morbidity through road accidents.

According to him, the scheme was the first in the components of the emergency services, which also have the ambulance services and the trauma centre built to facilitate effective health care delivery for victims of accident in the state.

Adeyanju said the change agents were expected to train the commercial vehicle drivers, community people and other groups on the processes of handling accident victims before the arrival of the medical team of the emergency service.

He said: “We have brought on board a complement of emergency services which is sensitizing and training the commuters on our highways on a network that we call FAST, acronym for First Aid Skill Treatment, and this basically is as a result of our determination to reduce the morbidity and mortality as a result of road traffic accidents.