The ‘108’ Advanced Life Support Ambulance Service, which has ferried many to new life, crossed the 50,000 mark recently.
The service, which is available in Thiruvananthapuram and Alappuzha from May 2010, has registered 50,010 cases till date, including 15,606 accident cases.
The ‘108’ has rushed 1,703 pregnant women to hospitals. Forty-five cases have been pretty special — babies were delivered of inside the ambulances. C.R. Akhil, an emergency medical technician attached to the service, has attended to three such delivery cases and recounts the moments of tension, and fear, when the staff realise that the delivery will happen before the team reaches a hospital.
“When we check the baby’s position, we get a grip of the situation. The ambulance is fully equipped for the procedure. Thankfully, we have had no complications so far,” adds Akhil, whose team monitored the delivery of a baby girl last February. “When I hold the baby, all the tension melts away,” he says.
The ‘108’ service was launched under the public-private partnership model. The ambulance service, provided by Kerala Medical Service Corporation Ltd. in association with Ziqitza Health Care Ltd, which manages the call centre and the ambulance fleet, covers 25 areas in the two districts. The service has a 24-hour call centre at Technopark and a network of 25 fully equipped ambulances.
