Sunday, 01 January 2023 | PNS | Dehradun
A serious patient or an accident victim trapped in an emergency can now be brought directly to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Rishikesh by a heli-ambulance for immediate treatment in Uttarakhand. AIIMS Rishikesh is going to start this facility in March 2023. AIIMS Rishikesh is the first government health institution in the country, where the facility of helicopter ambulance will work. AIIMS Rishikesh will run this service for the mountain State of Uttarakhand from its level.
Due to the State’s geographical conditions, the seriously injured in road accidents and disasters do not get proper treatment on time. Such serious patients will not have to face the challenges of reaching the hospital in time. The planned heli-ambulance will now be sent from AIIMS Rishikesh to pick up such emergency patients and the patient in distress will be air-lifted to the trauma center of AIIMS. The AIIMS Rishikesh executive director Dr Meenu Singh said about this scheme that the helicopter will be made available to AIIMS by the month of February by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. It will be the endeavour of AIIMS that a serious patient or a seriously injured person can be taken to AIIMS within half an hour from any area of Uttarakhand. She said that AIIMS itself will operate the heli-ambulance service and in this regard, the ministry has completed correspondence and testing of other standards. It should be mentioned here that AIIMS Rishikesh has a helipad facility and three helicopters can land here at the same time.
Dr Singh said that the technical staff for the heli ambulance service will be arranged by the Civil Aviation department while all other arrangements related to operations including doctors and nursing officers are to be done by AIIMS. However, she also said that before starting the service, a comprehensive system needs to be made to locate the injured person or patient trapped in trouble in the remote mountainous areas. Dr Madhur Uniyal, in charge of heli service in AIIMS Rishikesh and surgeon of the trauma department, said that the trauma helpline number 18001804278 is already working for the convenience of emergency patients in the trauma department of AIIMS. Now work is going on to set up a call center for heli-ambulance service as well.
