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Neonatal calls rare on South African ambulances
Infrequent exposure to prehospital neonatal interventions and resource utilisation by a public EMS in the Western Cape, South Africa
BMC Emergency Medicine · 2026-07-27 · Added 25 October 2026
A two-year review of 9,825 neonatal activations in the Western Cape public EMS found neonates were just 0.7% of workload with rare high-risk interventions (prehospital intubation 0.4%), and non-specialist crews attended two-thirds of high-acuity cases despite limited neonatal scope of practice.
- Study type
- Cohort
- Design
- Retrospective review of electronic patient care records, 2022–2023
- Participants
- 9,825 neonatal activations
- Main finding
- Neonatal activations were 0.7% of EMS workload; prehospital intubation 0.4%; recorded mechanical ventilation 4.6% versus sedation/analgesia 1.1%; specialist retrieval teams were strongly associated with advanced interventions
- Caveat
- Descriptive record review in a low-resource public system — staffing, scope of practice and case mix differ from Australian services
- Bottom line
- Context only
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). A low-resource South African public EMS with different scopes of practice, but the core problem is identical in Australia — most paramedics almost never touch a neonate, so skills decay is a shared training challenge.
Learning goal
Strengthen my preparedness for rare high-acuity neonatal cases given limited routine exposure in Australian prehospital practice.
More
- Topic: Paediatrics
- Daily scan: 25 October 2026
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