Karnataka adds 120 Advanced Life Support ambulances to ‘108’ service

Thomas (Special correspondent)

* 120 Advanced Life Support Ambulances added under Arogya Kavacha*

* Ambulance service to get facelift with GPS and Hospitals Mapping: Health Minister Dr.K.Sudhakar*

Chief Minister,Basavaraj Bommai,in the presence of other ministers as,Dr.Sudhakar,Byrathi Basavaraj,B Sriramulu,Munirathnam,ST Somashekar,V Sommanna,R Ashoka,SR Vishwanath,Chief Secretary,P Ravikumar, Additional Chief secretary, Manjunath Prasad,senior health officers,as,Trilokchandra,Gaurav Gupta,Javeed Akhtar and others on Sunday inaugurated the 120 Advance Life Support (ALS) ambulances added under the Arogya Kavacha – 108 service in Bengaluru.

Speaking at the occasion Health Minister Dr.K.Sudhakar said,There are about 710 ambulances operating under the Arogya Kavacha – 108 scheme and 155 among them are ALS ambulances.All the 120 ambulances flagged off by CM today are ALS ambulances.”

Ambulance service is an integral part of our healthcare delivery system and plays a vital role in saving lives during emergencies.

Our government is committed to expand its network and enhance quality of services.

The Arogya Kavacha which was introduced in 2008 by the then CM Shri BS Yediyurappa and then Health Minister Sriramulu will be given a new facelift.

If technologies like GPS, mobile app are adopted then we can ensure that ambulance reaches the patient within 10-15 minites.

The mapping of hospitals helps to identify the nearest available hospitals and also brings in transparency.

Now it takes about 30-45 minutes for ambulance to reach the patient in urban areas and in rural areas it is even more.

We are working to bring down the turn around time to 10-15 mins by using technology and also increasing the number of ambulances.

At present there are is 1 ambulance for 1 lakh population and we want to increase it to make 1 ambulance for every 45,000 to 50,000 population. We also provide training to drivers and paramedical staff to make the service more people-friendly, said Sudhakar.

“State to clock 5 crore doses soon”

We are administering about 3.8 lakh doses of vaccine each day on an average.This is more than the number of doses administered in the entire Russia.

We are few lakhs short of completing 5 crore doses and we will soon reach this big milestone, Sudhakar said.