In a step towards saving life of the accident victims, Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy on Saturday directed the concerned authorities to strengthen the ‘Golden Hour Management’ system with a definite standard of procedure (SOP) for the first 48 hours of free treatment.
Tripathy gave the direction while reviewing the system at the Lokseva Bhawan here where Health and Family Welfare Secretary Pramod Kumar Meherda outlined the issues for discussion.
Tripathy also directed to bring all the private and Government ambulances under the umbrella of one common call center to provide earliest service to the victims.
He asked all hospitals to follow rules and provide the best quality life saving treatment to the accident victims for first 48 hours free of cost.
The Health and Family Welfare Department would soon issue a SOP in this regard. Guidelines for stabilising the patients in the ambulance itself on their way to trauma care centers would also be issued by the department.
It was revealed that presently 512 '108-Ambulances' and 19 fire station ambulances are providing emergency service to accident victims during the 'golden hour'.
Besides, the National Highway Authorities of India (NHAI) have also deployed one ambulance for a stretch of 50 km of NH.
Besides, a total of 1,562 private ambulances are being operated by the private hospitals, charity institutions and corporate houses.
It was decided that 'technical standards' for registration of an ambulance would be prepared by the Health and Family Welfare Department keeping in view the National Ambulance Code.
This would specify the equipments, 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 and Transport Department would register an ambulance only when it satisfies the required technical standards.