subject: Should First Aid Kits be Added to Buses? [print this page] First aid kits are required in a number of places for safety, as you never know when an injury is going to happen. But, in the UK, first aid kits aren't required on bus routes that travel fewer than 50 kilometers. However, recently, a passenger on one of these buses slipped and hit her head and no first aid kit was around to tend to the wound she received. The wound itself, according to the article, warranted 11 staples but nothing was available on the bus to stop the bleeding or sterilize the area until an ambulance arrived.
However, according to the article, the bus company, Oxford Bus Company, sees this as an isolated incident and, as indicated by a quote in the article, doesn't plan to add first aid kits to vehicles traveling fewer than 50 kilometers any time soon. The group Bus Users UK, on the other hand, thinks that having first aid kits on buses is necessary, and they're certainly right. While this incident might have been isolated, who knows when another injury or heart attack might happen? Because these incidents can happen anywhere, and passengers aren't always prepared, a basic first aid kit should be kept on board as back up.
If safety were to take precedence in the US and UK, first aid kits, as well as defibrillators, would be everywhere. In the case of wound care, tending to the wound as soon as possible often means that the likelihood of infection lessens, while the same can be true of attending to a heart attack victim with an AED defibrillator. For many medical emergency instances, having to wait without care often means more complications will result. First aid kits should be offered in public places or areas with large amounts of people so the victim can receive care as soon as possible.
