International symposium on emergency medicine

1. Introduction
In the last ten years we have witnessed an increasing number of epidemics of communicable
diseases. And every year when a new type of influenza appears somewhere in the world, events tend
to follow the same pattern. Usually it starts with the media spreading the news, and then the local
authorities publish some guidelines and / or models that should be followed. In Slovenia the Institute
of Public Health usually issues those protocols. However, throughout this period, in Slovenia at least,
these protocols have never included guidelines for ambulance transport of a patient with a specific
communicable disease. In 1995 Slovenia adopted a Law about contagious diseases 1 that has been
revised a few times. The current version, which dates from 2006, contains the original Article 21, the
first paragraph of which states that all the persons for whom isolation or quarantine was ordered can
be transported only in a way and under conditions that avoid cross infection. The second and last
paragraph of the same Article says that the minister decides the way and the conditions of the
transport. However, to date no executive directive or other document has been published.
The above mentioned law is a general act that covers various circumstances relating to infection,
cross infection, and diseases, and imposes on authorities and institutions the most common
procedures that should be done to avoid danger to the health of citizens. The law1 specifies some ways
of protecting the population against infectious diseases. Individual health care employers and health
care institutions implement the special measures. Individuals and institutions that are socially involved
in health care implement the general measures. Article 8 gives a complete list of diseases and related
information sorted into groups according to their nature and measures to prevent and control them.
The regulation on notification of infectious diseases and specific measures for their prevention and
control2 is a short regulation with only 21 articles; it includes the categorization of the diseases listed

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The responses showed that the majority of the participants (n=16) had been employed in EMS for 6
or more years, 11 for more than 10 years. On the question how often the respondent had to deal with
the transport of the contagious patient per year, the replies were as shown in the table 1a (left). The
next question asked for an estimate of how often in one year the unit where he / she was employed
provided transport of a contagious patient. The replies are shown in table 1b (right)