“As many as 69 lakh emergencies have been attended to over the last five years”
“We are not restricting ourselves to emergency management”
COIMBATORE: After having managed thousands of emergencies in cities, villages and roads of 10 States, Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) has plans to introduce its ambulance service in more States.
“We have just got clearance from the government of Chhattisgarh,” Chief Executive Officer of EMRI Venkat Changavalli told The Hindu here on Friday. “It will be the 11th State where we will operate our service. We are now operating in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya,” he said. The State governments provide 100 per cent funding for the operations, while EMRI spends on leadership, research and training.
“The Maharashtra Cabinet has cleared our proposal and we expect to enter Punjab and New Delhi,” Mr. Changavalli said.
Three other States under consideration were Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. But there was no positive response yet, compared to the other States. If these three States were to keep away, EMRI's ambition of touching 10,000 services in 2011 would not be realised.
“We now operate 2,710 ambulances in 10 States. They handle 11,300 emergencies a day. As many as 69 lakh emergencies have been attended to over the last five years and 1.72 lakh lives have been saved after people requested for the service by dialling the toll free number 108. The number of lives saved in Tamil Nadu is 16,000,” he said. “In fact, Tamil Nadu wants more ambulances, probably another 160 in addition to the nearly 380 already in operation.”
EMRI hoped to increase the fleet strength by another 4,000 by the end of this year. But, it could touch only 6,000 by the end of 2011 owing to the uncertainty over Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, he explained.
EMRI would also set up a training centre in the South, apart from the one in Hyderabad. “There are plans for one at Tambaram near Chennai in Tamil Nadu and one each in Gujarat and Uttarakhand,” he said.
Research
“We are not restricting ourselves to emergency management. We are also getting into research in areas such as complications in pregnancy, accidents and chest pain among the rural people,” Mr. Changavalli said.
Healthcare facilities in the rural areas needed to be improved. EMRI wanted to do the gap-filling by taking up improvements to the emergency rooms in rural health centres.
“We do not want the good work done in the ambulance to get defeated by poor facilities in the hospitals or health centres where the patients are rushed to. So, we are into renovating the emergency rooms to make them totally life-saving. We have done this at 10 centres in Goa and will take up 50 centres in Assam. The objective is to have the patients' condition stabilised on arrival.”