The 108 Mrityunjoy free ambulance service in the state is making continued efforts to reduce the average response time over and above the present average response time of 19 minutes.
Regional manager of GVK-EMRI (Upper Assam and Barak Valley) Kanakendu Sinha addressing media persons here on Friday said that as part of continuous efforts to improve the quality of the service the organisation has been working to lower the response time while providing service to a patient.
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Sinha said that this was being done as per the directive of State Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, and that the organisation was trying to reduce the average response time even further to 15 minutes.
Sinha said that earlier the average response time was 29 minutes a year ago and this had been reduced to 19 minutes, which he said was a gain of 10 minutes.
Regarding Jorhat district, Sinha said that was 21 minutes compared to 33 minutes a year ago.
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Sinha said that this had been possible due to induction of several new vehicles and relocating the ambulances to more centrally located stations so that they could move in all directions in minimal time.
He said that upgrade of system and also imparting training to the call-centre staff who takes the phone calls, were some of the steps taken to improve the service.
State head of GVK-EMRI, Marketing and Communication, Dhurjoti Prasad Bhattacharya, who also addressed the meet enumerated how many new vehicles had been inducted I recently.
“Out of 380 Mrityunjoy ambulances presently operating across the state, 95 have been replaced with new vehicles in December 2017; while 75 have been replaced in June this year,” he said.
Bhattacharya said that there was a plan to induct another 75 new vehicles in the future to replace the old ambulances.
He said that in Jorhat district 11 out of the 12 ambulances have been replaced and remaining one too would be replaced soon. NHM, Assam chapter has supplied the vehicles.
The emergency ambulance service is offered by the Hyderabad-based organisation GVK-EMRI across Assam.