Lacking awareness, people choose commercial services

Mumbai: Due to the lack of awareness and long response time of the ‘108 Free Ambulance Service’, patients are being forced to opt for private ambulance services. While the current response time of an 108 ambulance is 25 minutes, private ambulances respond within 10 to 15 minutes, sources said. 

Despite the fact the 108 ambulance service boas-ts of a state-of-the-art facilities and free services, people are either unaware of the service or are hesitant. 

According to data displayed on the Maharash-tra Emergency Medical Services (MEMS) website that is responsible for running the 108 emergency medical services. There is a fleet of 937 ambulances, which include 233 Advanced Life Support  and 704 Basic Life Supp-ort Ambulances with over 5,000 EMS professionals. MEMS recently launc-hed the bike ambulance services also to address the issue of cutting down response time. Since its launch in January 2014, the MEMS control room located at Pune has responded to 20,44,006 calls on 108 across the state. However, in Mumbai it has attended to 45,000 calls in the past four years. The delay in response time could also be due to the locations at which the ambulances are stationed namely, Gateway of India, Dadar Chowpatty, Juhu Chowpatty, Girgoan Chowpatty and Aksa beach, Malad. 

Mumbai resident Arn-ab Dasgupta called 108 after seeing an injured person at Bandra Band-stand last year. After making the call he waited for the ambulance to arrive, which reached the spot 37 minutes later.  

However, Dr Dilip Patil, a general physician from Wadala, said 108 ambulance services could be delayed due to traffic, but they were better than other services as they employ the GPS system. He, however, agreed that there was a longer response time for civic and government-run ambulances operating from hospitals.