Anything of progress in my country never fails to catch the fancy of my attention. Thinking about undermining situation of politics can easily turn anyone pessimistic but some efforts, however small they may be by people back in the country derives rays of hopes in everyone. And no wonder the country is bound to move forward in a span of time if everyone makes their own efforts.
One recent effort I want to point out is in the emergency services sector. Nepal Ambulance Service (NAS) is trying to “develop a new system” for an integrated standard emergency services. With the motto of “Saving Lives along the Way” and simple dial of 102 (toll-free number), NAS is making ambulances available to needy ones.
This new ambulance service scheduled to start in upcoming months and is limited to Kathmandu and Lalitpur.
Call 102 and you can have a full-fledged ambulance service with trained emergency medical staff onboard. NAS’s ambulances are facilitated with an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) with the required skills. The service isn’t free though. You need to pay Rs 500 for service excluding any medical expenses. One more limitation is this service is only available to Kathmandu and Lalitpur. Currently, the five ambulances of NAS will be stationed at Sita Paila, Satdobato, Koteshwor, Narayan Gopal Chowk, and Kamal Pokhari. When someone dials 102, the dispatcher assesses the situation and communicates with the ambulance in close proximity to the caller’s area.
And the most important part as I was talking about efforts is; this is a non-profit service from the effort of individuals and corporate houses in Nepal. The five NAS ambulances have been donated by organizations like Brihat Investment, Golcha Organization, KIST Bank along with Dr Suraj Shakya, and Pawan Agrawal. Operational costs also come from the patron members who donate Rs 1,000 for five years, corporate members who donate Rs 5,000 monthly and one-time donors.
Our government has the best plans, best policies, some ambulances and literally everything but when it comes to operation, it’s always a failure, often unsatisfactory. And things like emergency services need to be taken seriously. Poor management of the ambulances in the country is compelling people to use private means for emergency and hospital purposes. A recent study pointed out that 53.6% came in taxis to the hospital and only 9.9% patients came in ambulance.
Our country’s health service is really poor and the efforts from the government seem minimal. In such situation initiating efforts like this one should be a road for positive way ahead! What Say?