Itanagar: 108 Emergency Response Ambulance Service Project under the National Health Mission (NHM), Arunachal Pradesh has ‘successfully’ completed one year of service in the state.
The emergency basic life support (BLS) ambulance service was started on June 21 last year with a fleet of 53 ambulances positioned across 21 districts in the state which has now grown to 88 ambulances.
Basic life support ambulances, equipped with all basic life support equipment & emergency medicine, are typically emergency ambulances and aid the necessary medical support during the transit till the patient is transported to the hospital. It also has a trained emergency medical technician and trained pilot as the first responder.
Since its inception, a total of 3417 cases have been served under this 108 Emergency Response Ambulance Service project till 20th June 2022, an official release said on Friday.
Presently, there are 88 ambulances dedicated to medical emergency services operating across the state. It has served various critical emergency cases, including 805 pregnancy-related cases, 561 road traffic accident cases, 303 non-vehicular trauma cases and 185 Covid-related cases with an average handling time of fewer than 90 seconds and an average response time of 12:52 minutes, it said.
Till now, 21 babies have been delivered in the 108 ambulances.
During the high Covid pandemic, 14 dedicated ambulances were pressed into service exclusively for transporting Covid patients.
Arunachal Pradesh is the only state providing 108 ambulance interstate transfers of patients in the country. Till now, a total of 804 patients have been transferred to health centres in Assam such as AMC Dibrugarh, GMC Guwahati, Tezpur Medical College etc and also to NEIGRIHMS Shillong, Meghalaya.
The 108 ambulances of General Hospital Tezu, Bomdila, District Hospital Seppa, Namsai, Tawang and TRIHMS Naharlagun have each covered more than 20,000 km transporting patients, the release added.
The 109 ambulance service is being operated by GVK EMRI, a not-for-profit organisation, on a public-private partnership (PPP) model.
