Never sure when he will get a call from the Arogya Kavacha 108 call centre instructing him about where to go next, Vedant Chari, a paramedic pilot, is on high alert every minute of his 12-hour shift.
At the frontline of emergency services, an average week sees him administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to cardiac arrest patients, attending to childbirth in the confines of a van with basic equipment, splinting up victims of road accidents, administering intravenous (IV) fluid to people struck by dehydration.
No job security
One of 300 paramedics employed under the government scheme, the Arogya Kavacha 108 ambulance service, Mr. Chari has neither a salary that can support his family nor job security that protects him from getting laid off without warning.
Like most paramedical staff who work in government and private hospitals, he is on a contract for the 108 service that operates under a public-private partnership with the GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute.
After a strike by the 108 service personnel last year demanding that their services be regularised, the Government raised their salary by 10 per cent, bringing it to Rs. 7,500 a month.
Paid a pittance
Professional life is tougher still for Manjunath, ambulance driver on contract with Bowring Hospital: he is paid nearly half of what a 108 paramedic is — Rs. 4,500 a month — and worse, works alone without a medical technician to accompany him.
The four government hospitals — Bowring, Victoria, Vani Vilas and Minto — together have a vacancy among paramedic staff of a 50 per cent, says O.S. Siddappa, Director and Dean of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute (BMCRI). “We are short by 200 paramedical personnel, which includes technical assistants, laboratory assistants and other technicians,” he admitted. Nurses have stepped in to fill in for the paramedics, he added.
The irony
Ironically, even as hospitals lament a paramedical staff shortage, the majority of students who pass out of paramedical science courses in the State remain unemployed. “Of the 20,000 students who pass out, only around 4,500 get recruited,” says Thippeswamy Naik, member-secretary, Paramedical Board, which controls 250 government and private institutions that offer the courses in the State.
While an ambulance driver conventionally gets a quick weeklong course on emergency care, the paramedical science courses for technicians could be a diploma after SSLC or PUC. The Government needs to give a greater thrust to recruitment, said Dr. Naik.
Dr. Siddappa told The Hindu that BMCRI is waiting for the green signal from the Finance Department to begin recruiting paramedical staff. Recruitments were stalled or delayed because staff were originally sent to the hospitals under BMCRI on deputation from the Department of Health and Family Welfare. “Shortly we (Department of Medical Education) will be able to recruit independently,” he said.
