Bhubaneswar: October 19: In another step towards saving life of the accident victims, Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy directed to strengthen the ‘Golden Hour Management’ system with definite standard of procedure (SOP) for first 48 hours of free treatment. Tripathy gave this direction while reviewing the system in a high level meeting held in Lokseba Bhawan conference hall today wherein Secretary Health & Family Welfare Pramod Kumar Meherda outlined the issues for discussion. Tripathy also directed to bring all the private and Government ambulances under the umbrella of one common call center to provide earliest service to the victims.
Tripathy further directed that as per the Government orders all the private and Government hospitals must provide the best quality life saving treatment to the accident victims for first 48 hours free of cost. Health & Family Welfare department would soon issue a SOP in this matter. Guideline for stabilizing the patients in the ambulance itself on their way to trauma care centers would also be issued by the department.
Discussions in the meeting show that presently 512 number of ‘108-Ambulances’ and 19 fire station ambulances are providing this emergency service during the ‘golden hour’. Besides, National High Way Authorities of India have also deployed one ambulance for a stretch of 50 kms of NH. Along with these the private ambulances run by the private hospitals, charity institutions and corporate houses are also in operation. A first hand preliminary estimation shows that there are around 1562 such private sector ambulances.
It was decided in the meeting that ‘technical standards’ for registration of an ambulance would be prepared by Health & Family Welfare department keeping in view the National Ambulance Code. This would specify the equipment, paramedic staff, medicines and other life saving gadgets for an ambulance. Each ambulance would also have one GPS tracking device for indicating its exact location and movement so that necessary assistance and instructions could be given to the personnel in the vehicle as and when required. The Commerce & Transport departments would register an ambulance only when it satisfies the required technical standards.
Principal Secretary Commerce & Transport G. Srinivas, Secretary Health & Family Welfare P. K. Meherda, Transport Commissioner Sanjeeb Panda along with senior officers from concerned departments and Golden Hour consultants participated in the discussions.
