Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Tuesday launched 24X7 emergency ambulance service to cater to urban as well as rural population.
Official sources said emergency ambulance service will now be a phone call away. Any needy person can call 108 to avail the service at doorstep. As many as 280 ambulances in 15 districts are ready to be rolled out in the first phase. The services will be provided in the ratio of one ambulance per one lakh population.
The scheme aims at facilitating high-end ambulance transportation from patient's doorstep to the hospital. The ambulance will have both Basic Life Support(BLS) and Advance Life Support (ALS) systems with technical support from both global positioning system (GPS) and mobile data terminal to help detect exact location of the caller.
To start with, the State Government will cover 15 districts including Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj, Angul, Puri, Dhenkanal, Sundargarh, Balasore, Bhadrak, Rayagada, Jajpur, Sambalpur, Cuttack, Khurda, Ganjam, and Koraput.
Average response time of 20 minutes for urban areas and 30 minutes for rural areas has been kept as performance parameters. Ziqitza Health Care Limited has signed an agreement with the Government for implementation of the scheme.