A child-oriented emergency medical services system

Although the principles of emergency care may be relatively easy to state, it is their promulgation that is so difficult. The development of EMS-C is the challenge. How do we take these principles of preserving children's lives and translate them into services for everyone who needs them? How do we organize a large, diverse health care system which will be responsive to this group of patients in need? How do we prioritize pediatric emergency care among the many other funding needs, both medical and nonmedical? The answer lies with the initiative and advocacy of each of us as child advocates. Providing all the aforementioned elements of the EMS-C will save children's lives. These are lives which are usually responsive to therapy, uncomplicated by interlocking disease states, and filled with potential for future achievement. The challenge is ours.