HYDERABAD: THE 108 emergency service in Telangana misses approximately 30 per cent of all emergency calls that it receives in a year due to shortage of ambulances. This is as per a document of the State Health Department accessed by Express.
According to the document, one of the major reasons behind the missing of calls is that a majority of the 108 ambulances are busy serving the interfacility transfer cases of pregnant women from the headquarters of various districts to tertiary hospitals in Hyderabad. To top that off, there is a serious dearth of ambulances in general.
As per figures from November 2018 to November 2019, the 108 ambulances responded and offered their services to 3,13,080 emergency calls. But almost 40 per cent of these calls — 1,24,087 to be exact — were pregnancy related. In the same period, 77,515 trauma calls were served. Meanwhile, the 108 service missed 1,33,218 emergency calls due to unavailability of ambulances, amounting to around 29 per cent of all calls. It also missed 287 calls of multi-casualty incidents.
The Health Department has decided to add more Advanced Life Support (ALS) ambulances to its fleet of 108 ambulances, in order to improve emergency services. It has requested the Central government for `5.83 crore as part of the Programme Implementation Plan for the year 2020-2021, so as to add one ALS ambulance in every district.
At present, Telangana has just 30 ALS ambulances. Of these, five are in Hyderabad, while the remaining are spread across 19 districts. As many as 13 districts do not have a single ALS ambulance.
Due to the dearth of ALS ambulances, the response time is also long, especially in the districts where it is 20 minutes. It is 10 minutes in Hyderabad.
These 30 ALS ambulances provided services to 56,991 calls in the November 2018-19 period, which is around 20 per cent of all calls received. These included 46,080 emergency services and 10,911 pregnancy-related calls.
While procurement of the 30 new ALS ambulances will help improve the emergency services, the number will definitely not prove enough.
According to the Health Department, with one ALS ambulance for every 2.5 lakh population, as many as 140 ambulances are required for the 3.5 crore population of Telangana. The State only has 30 now.
Appeal to Centre
The State Health Department has decided to add more Advanced Life Support (ALS) ambulances to its fleet of 108 ambulances, in order to improve emergency services. It has requested the Central government for `5.83 crore so as to have one ALS ambulance in every district