Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Sunday inaugurated 120 Advance Life Support (ALS) ambulances which are deployed for operations under the Arogya Kavacha-108 service.
According to Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar, the current Arogya Kavacha-108 scheme ambulance fleet comprises 710 vehicles, out of which 155 are ALS ambulances. He added that he expects the 120 new ALS vehicles to bolster the capabilities of the service.
“If technologies like GPS and mobile apps are adopted, then the 108 service can ensure that ambulances reach patients within 10-15 minutes,” Dr Sudhakar said.
“The mapping of hospitals helps to identify the nearest available hospitals and also brings in transparency. Now it takes about 30-45 minutes for an ambulance to reach the patient in urban areas and in rural areas it is even more. We are working to bring down the turnaround time to 10-15 minutes by using technology and also increasing the number of ambulances.”
He added that the current availability of ambulances is one ambulance per one lakh population. “We want to increase it to one ambulance for every 45,000 to 50,000 of the population,” he said.
The Arogya Kavacha-108 service was launched in 2008.
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