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Dr Rasivhaga Sikhwivhilu.

Help at hand for accident victims

 

Many accident victims lose their lives because help arrives too late. This can be a thing of the past as victims can now call for help wherever they are.

A local Vhembe medical doctor has created a cellphone app that can be used to summon help when one is involved in an accident. Dr Rasivhaga Sikhwivhilu, together with two of his friends, the late Mr Kaizer Lubisi and Mr Terrence Malatjie, developed an app called Accident SOS.

As to how it all started, Sikhwivhilu said the idea came out of a bad experience he had while driving in the Magoebaskloof area when an accident happened. "People were injured during the accident and were trying to call the emergency services for help, but that was not forthcoming as the calls had to be transferred to the switch board. While all this was happening, one of the injured passed away, still waiting for help. Had the help arrived earlier, the life of the injured could have been saved," he said.

The 35-year-old doctor further indicated that the incident became the turning point in his life as he started thinking of a way to turn the situation around. This signalled the birth of the app. “After this painful experience, I started thinking of creating something that would call the closest emergency services to attend medical emergencies, and thus Accident SOS was born.”

The app will immediately send a signal when activated by the user to the closest EMS providers and the EMS providers will receive the name, location, pictures, audio or video of the scene. This will assist the emergency personnel who will then just navigate to the scene, knowing how critical the situation is.

Sikhwivhilu added that all the user needed to do was to activate the app that would also send signals to the user’s spouse or next of kin.

To download and use the Accident SOS app is free. Users can download it for free from the Google play store or the Appstore. People can follow Accident SOS pages on Facebook and Instagram.

 

 

Date:09 September 2019

By: Elmon Tshikhudo

Elmon Tshikhudo started off as a photographer. He developed an interest in writing and started submitting articles to local as well as national publications. He became part of the Limpopo Mirror family in 2005 and was a permanent part of the news team until 2019.

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