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1298 Ambulance Team
By HB, Jan. 2008
Nagpur, India

When my mother had to be taken to the hospital a few years earlier after she suddenly collapsed, the ambulance that we called for took a good half hour to arrive (the hospital was located across the street from us), and was simply a white passenger van with the letters Ambulance painted on it. Inside was just an oxygen cylinder, a stretcher and a paramedic (the term grossly overstates his credentials). There was no basic or essential life saving equipment, nothing or no one that could monitor vital signs of the patient or initiate any emergency procedures. It was really just a taxi.

Today, I am glad to know of the existence of the 1298 Ambulance Team in Mumbai which I happened to come across recently. The 1298 Dial for Ambulance is "an Ambulance Access for All initiative to provide a network of Fully Equipped Advanced and Basic Life Support Ambulances in the city of Mumbai. In case of a medical emergency, any Mumbai resident may dial 1298 for accessing a fully equipped Advanced Life Support (ALS) Ambulance within the shortest possible time."

It is an initiative started by "a group of young professionals with a high degree of social and public commitment with the primary objective of rolling out a nationwide network of Life Support Ambulance Service accessible to anyone, anytime and anywhere through an easy to remember four digit telephone number." For more information, visit the Dial for Ambulance website.

I wish there were more such services that were available in smaller towns and cities across India and certainly across the world. The intent of publishing this story was to highlight the fact that there is a critical need for:

» standardization & certification of ambulance services by appropriate licensing authorities
» standards on response times from the time of the initial call
» education of life support personnel on proper care in acute care situations