Emergency medical services for Maharashtrians

B D Narayankar

MANY PEOPLE were stranded for 21 days at Supaul, a village in Bihar that shares its border with Nepal, after Kosi embankment gave way inside Nepal a couple of months ago. In another flood-affected Manganj village, as many as 11 people died of diarrhea on a school’s roof. Many others took private boats to ferry ill people for giving medical treatment out of flood-affected areas.

These were some of the flood-related hardships faced by Biharis living in rural areas. Hopefully, Maharashtrians wouldn’t have to face such difficulties in flood-related situations from January next. On October 15, Maharashtra government gave green signal for the first phase of the emergency medical services (EMS) project in association with Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI).

Pegged at Rs 103.74 crore over the next three years, the project will provide emergency medical services comprising 690 ambulances on dialing 108, a toll-free number, during emergencies and avail of free ambulance services.

According to a statement released by the chief minister’s office, a MoU between the state government and EMRI will be signed in October and services would begin in January 2009. The MoU elaborates that EMRI would operate from URO Hospital at Aundh in Pune and later operate from the land given by the state government.

The decision was taken after considering the poor medical infrastructure prevailing in rural areas as well the distances between hospitals and settlements. "This will ensure that the rural areas are not deprived of EMS especially during a natural disaster,’’ said a state official.

However, the service that aims to obtain a quick medical response in the state will not cover Mumbai (island and suburbs), Thane, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nagpur, Aurangabad and Nashik areas, which have municipal corporations.

EMRI started this service in Andhra Pradesh in 2005, and now has 652 ambulances for a population of eight crore. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of the infotech giant and his brothers, have signed a MoU with eight other states. While the 108 service is already available in states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Goa, it is scheduled to start soon in Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Karnataka.

The modus operandi

1) Dial 108 and you will be connected to a call centre.
2) The communication officer will collect facts and route the nearest ambulance to the site
3) The ambulance is well equipped to provide the pre-hospital care while transporting the patient to the desired hospital.

This same logic holds good for police and fire services.

Source: Meri News