One year after the tragic death of the young Talal Kassem, Roads For Life celebrated the graduation of the first class of doctors who underwent the ATLS course through the special fund created by the organization. This course, ensure a training for doctors specialized in ER medicine in order to increase the chances of survival of a trauma patient specially for injured patients arriving at ER department of hospitals right after an accident. (If you want to get more details about this course and how it started with Roads For Life check the previous article wrote in June 2011.)

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The graduation ceremony took place at the AUBMC, Hariri School of Nursing on October 17^th, 2011 in presence of Talal’s family, graduating doctors, volunteers from the Lebanese Red Cross, doctors from the AUBMC involved in the course, official representatives of the Lebanese government and the press.

Now let’s talk about interesting stuff that has been said prior to the certificates hand over:

Roads for Life actual plans are to offer the ATLS course free of charge to 130 physicians from different Lebanese hospitals at a cost of $750 per doctor over 3 consecutive days, which result in a total of $97,500. They will add to this amount $2,500 to offer the course to rescuers from the Lebanese Red Cross. This makes a total amount of $100,000 ensured by The Talal Kassem Fund for Post Accident Care to fulfill this objective. The organization was able to raise those funds through the concert they organized in June 2011 at Zouk Mikhael with two French artists: L’Algerino and Faudel.

In addition to this great step, Roads for Life in collaboration with the AUBMC will attend a conference at San Francisco very soon through which they hope the American College of Surgeons will support them and give them the required resources to offer ATNS and PHTLS courses in Lebanon: The ATNS course is dedicated to emergency nurses and the PHTLS is dedicated to rescue teams and paramedics like the Lebanese Red Cross, Lebanese Red Crescent and Lebanese Civil Defense. Let’s hope their participation at this conference will be successful 🙂

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Roads for Life is doing an amazing job to reduce death related to trauma accidents. Another good initiative from the civil society to cover weaknesses in our healthcare system. Like many other Lebanese citizens, I would like to see the government doing more, putting aside political differences and contributing to save lives.