VIJAYAWADA: A 17-year-old youth died, allegedly due to unavailability of 108 vehicle or government ambulance at Gannavaram Community Health Centre on Friday. T Rakesh Kumar, a native of Chikkavaram village, was studying ITI first-year course at Gannavaram.
While returning home on a motorcycle along with his friend after writing the examination, he suddenly collapsed. He was rushed to Gannavaram Community Health Centre where the doctors referred the case to the Government General Hospital in Vijayawada.
His relatives who rushed to the community health centre on hearing the news, called 108 ambulance to shift him to the GGH in Vijayawada. But there was no response. When they were told that the 108 vehicle was made part of the Governor’s convoy and there was no oxygen in the hospital, the relatives entered into a heated argument with the hospital staff. Given the emergency, they hired a private ambulance to shift Rakesh to Vijayawada, but to their horror, they found that it was not equipped with oxygen cylinder. On the way, Rakesh died. His friends alleged that all the oxygen cylinders in the community health centre were empty. “When we called for 108, they said all the nearest ambulances were busy,” they said.
“When we approached the hospital authorities, they said that they don’t have an ambulance and asked us to hire a private ambulance. The hospital doesn’t even have oxygen cylinders and after this incident they brought the full cylinders. We lost our son only because of the negligence and lack of proper facilities in the hospital. If at all we could get the 108 ambulance in time, we could have saved our son,” Rakesh’s father said.
On the other hand, the district health officials denied the death of Rakesh due to unavailability of ambulance. Speaking to TNIE, DMHO TSR Murthy said, “There are over five ambulances in Gannavaram mandal and there is no chance of unavailability of the emergency vehicle. At that very point of time, all of them might have been engaged. We would inquire the incident.”