Sepura and GEG Support Emergency Hospital in Italy

Sepura’s Italian partner GEG has donated vital critical communications equipment to an emergency hospital in Italy, to aid the country’s medical support during the Covid-19 outbreak.

The rapidly deployed Fiera di Bergamo hospital is situated in an event venue in Bergamo, the worst affected region in Italy and is managed by staff from a nearby permanent hospital. The facility was constructed in just a week, supported by private and corporate donations and volunteer support from the region. It comprises 142 beds including over 70 intensive care beds and access points for both ambulances and helicopters.

As a mark of the community endeavour behind the construction, the canteen is being run by the locally-based Michelin-starred chef Vittorio Cerea, with his family volunteering to provide meals to the emergency staff. To ensure that all medical staff, logistic support and volunteers can communicate effectively, GEG have donated a complete critical communications system to the site, comprising of 50 Sepura SC21 Tetra radios, programming software and a Tetra base station from Damm to provide the local network. The radios have been provided with individual battery chargers and belt clips to reduce the amount of contact with hands and to reduce the risk of cross contamination. For the control room, GEG have provided a desk mounted SRG3900, multiple charging units and desktop programming devices to ensure that the radios are correctly set up for emergency use. After performing a full site inspection and installing the base station, GEG also delivered training to all radio fleet administration staff on basic radio use, including switching between talk groups and making full duplex calls.

Ian Gotti, Sales Area Manager for GEG said: “Communication is particularly important in this environment, as many of the key workers in this highly pressured environment are not used to working together; on site there are member of both the Italian and Russian armies, volunteers from international emergency response and civil protection organisations, nurses and medical staff from all across Italy and many maintenance staff across site covering many functions. We are proud for GEG to have played our part in enabling Italy to fight back against the coronavirus and we stand with the emergency teams on the frontline that are providing the expert medical help patients desperately require.”

Due to the protective masks worn on the mouth, communication over a critical communications device was the only available solution to the workers. The Sepura radios allow for a very quick configuration and programming of the fleet and also an efficient way to link the fleet to the control room which was vital in this situation. The radios have the additional advantage of being easy to clean and sanitise, capable of functions with minimal use of hands and provide guaranteed secure coverage even in the deepest parts of the building.

Victor Rodrigues, Strategic Account Director for Sepura said: “GEG have many years’ experience in selling Tetra systems into environments such as hospitals and it is a tribute to their dedication that the system was up running so quickly to support the emergency operation. We pass our best wishes to the medical staff on the frontline.”