Credit: MINT

Five new generation SAMU emergency medical service vehicles have been commissioned in Luxembourg. 

On Tuesday, Luxembourg's Minister of the Interior, Taina Bofferding, and the Director General of the Grand-Ducal Fire and Rescue Corps (CGDIS), Paul Schroeder, presented this new generation of medical intervention vehicles, funded by the state for the benefit of CGDIS. Equipped with high-performance equipment and material, these vehicles will very soon be deployed in the field to fulfil the missions of the emergency medical assistance service, SAMU.

The SAMU occupies an important part in the rescue chain within the CGDIS and is considered among the most efficient on an international scale, thanks to qualified personnel and modern equipment. Set up in the 1980s, the SAMU was reinforced in 2019 with the establishment of two additional SAMU bases, in response to a constantly growing resident and cross-border worker population (quadrupled since 1986). These demographic changes have led not only to an increase in emergency calls, but also to a diversification of types of interventions.

Interior Minister Taina Bofferding recalled: “With the two new bases, stationed respectively in Hesperange and Findel, Luxembourg now has five SAMU bases. These were necessary to fill the cases of unavailability, present in the past, in order to reduce them to a minimum. It is therefore a matter of strengthening the operational chain, to better guarantee the care of each citizen”.

As a follow-up to the establishment of additional bases, the SAMU has now been equipped with new intervention vehicles (the latest Mercedes SUV model) in order to allow each base to have the necessary means to fulfil their missions. 

In addition, the Interior Minister pointed out the important role of the national emergency organisation plan in the organisation of emergency services in Luxembourg. This instrument "will be the compass which will identify and analyse the risks and will enact the appropriate measures in terms of operational and territorial organisation of aid in the future. When it turns out that the measures currently in place are becoming insufficient, useful adaptations will emerge; this also concerns the SAMU".

Minister Taina Bofferding concluded by expressing her thanks to all emergency workers for their interventions during the ongoing pandemic: “These last months have only confirmed that it is only together and with a esprit de corps that situations difficult can be mastered. Each and every one contributes by their actions to the containment of COVID-19 and this deserves the deepest recognition, which I would like to convey on behalf of all members of the government".