Emergency medical services (EMS) responders are the first to provide prehospital care to those with acute life-threatening conditions. With proper training, these individuals are able to evaluate an event, identify the resources needed, triage, and provide crisis standards of care (CSC) to ensure that scarce resources are allocated effectively and that the most severe cases are transported first. These individuals are also responsible for transporting these patients to an appropriate healthcare facility where definitive care can be given. Without EMS personnel, the prognosis of individuals with acute life-threatening conditions would be poorer, or worse, they may not even make it to a facility that can adequately provide definitive care; this is how pre-hospital care is integral in providing access to health care in emergency settings.
In the Philippines where healthcare is generally underfunded, GIDAs suffer the most because there is an overall lack of hospital resources and even more so for pre-hospital resources. The lack of EMS personnel results in lower access to life-saving interventions and a poorer prognosis for anyone with acute life-threatening conditions, thereby increasing morbidity and mortality rates.
Reference: Committee on Guidance for Establishing Crisis Standards of Care for Use in Disaster Situations; Institute of Medicine. Crisis Standards of Care: A Systems Framework for Catastrophic Disaster Response. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2012 Mar 21. 6, Prehospital Care Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201058/