JORHAT, July 21 - The 108 Mrityunjoy ambulance emergency response free service offered to the public by the Hyderabad-based organisation GVK-EMRI across Assam, has been able to reduce the average response time in providing the service.
Addressing media persons here on Friday, the regional manager of GVK-EMRI (Upper Assam and Barak Valley) Kanakendu Sinha said that as part of continuous efforts to improve the quality of service the organisation has been working to lower the response time after receiving a call.
Sinha said that the average response time across Assam at present is 19 minutes, which he said that has been brought down by 10 minutes since a year back from 29 minutes.
The regional manager said that the average response time of Jorhat district currently is 21 minutes, which was 33 minutes a year back.
He said that as per the directive of State Health and Family Welfare Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the organisation was trying to reduce the average response time to 15 minutes.
Sinha said induction of new fleet of vehicles, relocating the places where the ambulances were stationed to see that the locations were in a central point followed by upgradation of system and also imparting training to the call centre staff who takes the phone calls, were some of the steps taken to improve the service.
State head of GVK-EMRI (Marketing and Communication) Dhurjoti Prasad Bhattacharya, said that among the 380 fleet 108 ambulances presently operational across the State, 95 were replaced with new vehicles in December 2017; while 75 were replaced in June this year.
Bhattacharya said that there was a plan to induct another 75 new vehicles in the immediate future to replace the old ambulances. He said in Jorhat district 11 out of the 12 ambulances (108) in service have been replaced and remaining one too will be replaced soon. NHM (Assam) has supplied the vehicles.
Bhattacharya said that 60 persons round-the-clock run the call centre of the organisation in Guwahati.
The senior GVK-EMRI official said receiving hoax and crank calls in large numbers on a daily basis was a major hurdle the organisation has been facing in offering the emergency services.
Expressing concern over such a trend, Bhattacharya said the service gets �misused� by such kind of acts and leads to wastage of resources and time.
Jorhat Programme Manager of GVK-EMRI Dhrubajyoti Bora was also present at the press conference in which two ASHA workers of the district spoke positively about the service.
The 108 service has completed nine years and seven months of operations in Assam.
