Ambulance service faces hurdles in dealing with response time

CHENNAI: The 108 ambulance service has identified accident hotspots to ensure easy accessibility to hospitals, as the National and State Highways usually lack adequate healthcare facilities and infrastructure.

The response time to these hotspots has improved after the accessibility to healthcare facilities and ambulances is made easy, claim officials of 108 service-provider GVK EMRI.

The ambulance accident hotspots are regularly identified by 108 ambulance service providers to cater to the emergency need of the patients across the State.

While there are several hotspots on National and State Highways, the hotspots within the city vary over time. There are several factors to be considered while identifying a hotspot as there can be temporary reasons.

“A certain accident hotspot might be there over the last 3 months because of some construction work in progress. Or there can be a temporary passageway that would have increased the movement of people in that particular area. Most road traffic accident hotspots have one or more factors including road construction, diversion, level crossing, railway crossing or bridges in the vicinity. In such places, people try to cross the road or there is a movement in places where it is more likely for an accident to occur. We deploy ambulances and staff in such places,” explained Selva Kumar, state head of operations, 108 GVK EMRI.

The ambulance drivers said most of the National and State Highways have hotspots in areas where residents try to cross the roads and meet with accidents due to a lack of proper infrastructure for them.

“Accidents are more common on State and National Highways than city limits. The response time is about 8 minutes within the city. We identify accident hotspots to reduce the response time in such places. But, a major challenge we face on Highways is that we usually receive emergency calls from motorists or passersby who leave the spot by the time we arrive. They also fail to give us the exact location, which is why we often request them to stay in the particular location when they call us,” added Selva Kumar.

To provide medical care to road traffic accident victims in such hotspots, emergency care centres are being planned, because the National or State Highways do not have adequate secondary or tertiary care healthcare institutions in such places.

Currently, there are 12 emergency care centres in the State of which four are in Chennai.