Keeping in mind the large number of killings that happen owing to road accidents on the tortuous and deadly Jammu-Srinagar Highway, the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways gifted to the District Hospital Ramban Rs 78 lakh worth Critical Care Ambulance with state-of-the-art equipment through National Highway Authority of India in the month of September last year for the use in shifting critical patients to hospitals either in Jammu or Srinagar for specialized treatment. In a number of reports that were made by inquiry committees on several road accidents on this Highway, it was urgently pleaded that some of the injured could be saved if adequate medical assistance was available in time. What happens is that those seriously wounded in such accidents have to be removed either to the hospital in Jammu or Srinagar whichever is nearer. The injured people are carried in ordinary vehicles and by the time they are brought to the emergency wards much of the blood is lost and their survival becomes exceedingly difficult. In order to overcome this debility, a fully equipped Critical Care Ambulance was gifted to Ramban Hospital with the advice that in case of any road mishap, the ambulance would be used to ferry the critically wounded person(s) to the hospital. This is a very noble gesture and should have been accepted with grace by deploying it for the purpose for which it has been provided.
But inputs from the new district reveal that authorities at Ramban Hospital make the ambulance available only to accompany the cavalcade of VIPs when they are on a visit to the region. In other words, the VIPs are provided mobile emergency unit besides the security cover, all at the expense of the public exchequer. In the first place the Critical Care Ambulance given to the Ramban District Hospital is not meant to accompany any cavalcade in any place or condition. It has to be stationed at the district hospital headquarter round the clock and will move out only when there is a mishap like road accident and the information is brought that the wounded need to be rescued and given medical treatment.
Surprisingly, it is revealed by hospital authorities in Ramban that the ambulance has not been put to use owing to the fact that no anesthesiologist is provided who would move along with the wounded person when carried to the hospital. It is a pity that the State Health Department cannot provide the service of an anesthesiologist and a surgeon for the purpose. What is the fun of keeping such a state-of-art Ambulance when the manpower that would handle it is not provided? On the other hand, it is learnt that when a VIP is on visit, the Health Department provides him the services of an Assistant Surgeon who travels in the Ambulance along with the cavalcade of the VIP.
This makes us recount the story of a dozen of Critical Care Ambulances ordered by the Health Department for the same purpose for which one has been provided by the Central Government. That entire case is hanging fire for last two years. A dispute has developed between the State authorities and the contractor whose tender had been approved but withdrawn after some time. That case has got stuck up in bureaucratic muddle while road accidents continue to take place every now and then and innocent passengers get killed or fatally wounded. Such is the callousness and insensitivity of the authorities.
Health Department should abandon mentality of appeasing the VIPs. They must care for the ordinary people, the ordinary tax payer and the ordinary labourer or voter. We are not having the Raj in this state but a popular and elected Government. The administrative procedures should be allowed free flow and not made person specific.
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