Odisha Govt To Strengthen Golden Hour Management For Free Treatment

Bhubaneswar: In another step towards saving the life of accident victims, the Odisha government has decided to strengthen the Golden Hour Management system with Definite Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the first 48 hours of free treatment.

A decision to this effect was taken at a high-level meeting presided over by Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy at the Lok Seva Bhawan here.

The chief secretary directed to bring all the private and government ambulances under the umbrella of one common call centre to provide early service to the victims. He said that as per government orders, all the private and Government hospitals must provide the best quality life-saving treatment to accident victims for the first 48 hours free of cost.

Present at the meeting Secretary, Health & Family Welfare, Pramod Meherda said that his department would soon issue an SOP in this matter. Guidelines for stabilising the patients in the ambulance itself on their way to trauma centres would also be issued by the department, he added.

At present, 512 ‘108-Ambulances’ and 19 fire station ambulances are providing this emergency service during the ‘Golden Hour’. Besides, the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has also deployed one ambulance for a stretch of 50 km on the NH. Apart from this, private ambulances run by private hospitals, charity institutions and corporate houses are also in operation. A first-hand preliminary estimation shows that there are around 1562 private sector ambulances.

It was decided in the meeting that the technical standards for the 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 will register an ambulance only when it satisfies the required technical standards.