• Zachary J Eisner, Peter G Delaney, Alfred H Thullah, Amanda J Yu, Sallieu B Timbo, Sylvester Koroma, Kpawuru Sandy, Abdulai Daniel Sesay, Patrick Turay, John W Scott, and Krishnan Raghavendran.
• Washington University in St. Louis, 1 Brookings Dr, St. Louis, MO, United States; LFR International Encino, California, United States.
• Injury. 2020 Nov 1; 51 (11): 2565-2573.

IntroductionFew countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have robust emergency medical services (EMS). The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends scaling-up lay first responder programs as the first step toward formal EMS development.Materials And MethodsWe trained and equipped 4,529 lay first responders (LFRs) between June-December 2019 in Bombali District, Sierra Leone, with a 5-hour hands-on, contextually-adapted prehospital trauma course to cover 535,000 people. Instructors trained 1,029 LFRs and 50 local trainers in a training-of-trainers (TOT) model, who then trained an additional 3,500 LFRs. A validated, 23-question pre-/post-test measured knowledge improvement, while six- and nine-month follow-up tests measured knowledge retention. Incident reports tracked patient encounters to assess longitudinal impact.ResultsMedian pre-/post-test scores improved by 43.5 percentage points (34.8% vs. 78.3%, p<0.0001). Knowledge retention was assessed at six months, with median score dropping to 60.9%, while at nine months, median score dropped to 43.5%. Lay first responders participating in courses led by TOT trainers had a pre-/post-test median score improvement of 30.4 percentage points (21.7% vs. 52.2%, p<0.0001). LFRs treated 1,850 patients over six months, most frequently utilizing hemorrhage control skills in 61.2% of encounters (1,133/1,850). The plurality of patients were young adult males (36.8%) and 48.7% of encounters were motorcycle injury-related.ConclusionA 5-hour first responder course targeting laypeople demonstrates significant emergency care knowledge improvement and retention. By training networks of transportation providers, lay first responder programs represent a robust and scalable prehospital emergency care alternative for low-resource settings.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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