Amid covid19 lockdown, the control room of emergency ambulance service 108 has come in for severe criticism by the doctors.
Several doctors from various community healthcare centres and other hospitals told Greater Kashmir that the “delay” in the response from the control room of emergency ambulance service 108 was badly affecting patient referrals.
They pointed to several “loopholes in the round-the-clock control room of the 108 emergency ambulance service operated by National Health Mission (NHM)”.
A doctor working in a community healthcare centre in central Kashmir said that on Sunday night she was struck by the panic after the phone call made to 108 service to ferry a critically ailing newborn to a bigger hospital proved to be futile. “Often when the call to 108 gets through, it is put on hold for several minutes with a music playing in the background. Once the operator responds, there is no sense of urgency from them,” said the doctor wishing anonymity.
The doctor said since the control-room for the ambulance service is based outside the Valley which makes the call reception “inefficient,”. “The operator’s lack of knowledge about Kashmir often confuses them about distances which affects the movement of ambulances. They get into arguments with doctors.”
The doctor said on Sunday night, the community healthcare centre had an emergency delivery case resulting in the newborn being critically ill. “The baby was quite unwell and the next few hours were quite critical for the newborn. We called the 108 service to send the child to a higher centre hospital but it took 20 minutes for the ambulance service to respond,” the doctor said.
Another doctors said the response to the calls from the operators is quite casual. “As it has been made mandatory, calls to the helpline are made from the mobile phone of the attendant. When we called 108 for the ambulance, the attendant was asked to hand over the phone to me. Minutes later the operator started asking patient details and questioning why the patient had to be shifted to a bigger hospital,” said the doctor.
“All this is quite time consuming especially since the operators are mostly unaware about the roads of cities and towns of the Valley,” he said.
The doctor said the delayed response from the control room of the ambulance service irked attendants who often blamed the doctors.
Director, National Health Mission, Bhupinder Kumar did not respond to calls and messages from this reporter.