LETTERS
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SOS FOR EMS
All Illinoisans should be able to count on the arrival of a welltrained, well-equipped medical crew within minutes of dialing 911. After all, every minute counts in a medical emergency. Unfortunately, Illinois’ Emergency Medical Services have been underfunded and overlooked for years. This has resulted in fewer personnel, antiquated equipment and some closures of EMS services altogether.
For example: On Oct. 1, the Illinois Medical Transportation Innovation Project (IMTIP) ceased operations. IMTIP, funded by the Illinois Department of Transportation, was a unique initiative from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale that aimed to develop solutions to deficiencies in the medical transportation system. IMTIP collaborated with EMS providers, medical professionals and public and private transportation providers across Illinois to alleviate gaps in both emergency and non-emergency medical transport of patients. A lack of funding forced IMTIP’s closure, negating any progress IMTIP made and putting lives at risk.
Unlike police and fire services, EMS was never legally classified as an “essential service” by the state. As a result there have been major funding shortages, meaning that in some areas of Illinois ambulance arrival times are rising, smaller crews are covering larger areas and fewer EMT’s are receiving advanced medical training.
Our EMS system, which is already stretched thin, has reached a breaking point. We need to support the brave men and women of our state’s EMS system. We urge you to make EMS an essential service in Illinois. Mary Ann Miller, RN Kent Adams Vice Chair, Illinois EMS Alliance Fire Chief, Romeoville Chair, Illinois EMS Alliance
WHO SURROUNDS WHOM?
I was a little mystified by the headline “Pentagon and NATO encircle Russia and China,” a runner-up for “Ten big stories the news media ignored,” in the Nov. 12 Illinois Times. NATO’s tiny Baltic members – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – with an increasingly bellicose Russia right on their borders to the east, south and even the west – these nations, not Russia, are surrounded.
Russia has increasingly militarized its island-like Kaliningrad enclave on Lithuania’s southwest border, taken from Germany at the end of World War II. From this outpost, it is increasingly menacing Lithuanian/ NATO airspace and territorial waters with overflights and war games.
We must pardon Lithuanians, who were brutally occupied by Russia from 1944 to 1991, if the intensifying saber-rattling by Russia doesn’t feel like a “game.”
On another point, if Russians don’t want to feel “surrounded,” maybe they should make themselves more comfortable with the concept of borders. I know this must be tough for the globe’s ultimate expansionist people, who rolled eastward across 10 time zones, conquering every indigenous people in their path all the way to the Pacific Ocean. If only they would give up trying to roll over the last small, independent nations to their west. Sandy Baksys Springfield
