HYDERABAD: Countering criticism that frequent breakdowns were seriously affecting the functioning of 108 ambulance services across the state, the GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) on Friday clarified that the quality and response time of emergency services in fact had improved over the past two years.

GVK-EMRI representative Siddhartha Bhattacharya said they were operating 752 state-of-the-art ambulances in the state, which were manned by trained emergency medical technicians, pilots and supported by highly qualified professionals. "We continue to provide world-class pre-hospital care 24x7 to over 3,200 critical cases of medical emergencies every day in the state. In fact, 90% of the total 35,000 emergency calls per day are picked up in the first ring itself and 5% in the second ring itself. An overwhelming reduction in the number of non-emergency calls has enabled us to handle critical emergencies better. The average response time in urban areas is 15 minutes and 20 to 25 minutes in rural and tribal areas," he said.

Responding to queries on the large number of breakdowns of 108 ambulances in the state, GVK EMRI AP operations PPP head Swaroop MSR said they operate 50 spare ambulances and at any point in time 30 ambulances of the fleet undergo service. "The wear and tear of these ambulances is very high. As a policy, GVK EMRI does not operate any ambulance with inadequate medical equipment necessary for emergency services. We have well-defined emergency management protocols and embedded technologies in place to improve the operational efficiency of the service," he pointed out.

The EMRI official said they were hopeful of signing a MoU with the state government by this month-end and put to rest certain doubts among the EMRI staff about the feasibility of the PPP agreement.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

 
Top