Centre aim to reduce road deaths in Odisha

With an aim to reduce road accident deaths in the State,

Centre has asked the state government to integrate the National Highways Authority of India’s (NHAI) 1033 emergency service with 108 ambulances.

This step will ensure a safer highways move and also the accident victims can be rushed to hospitals within 10 to 15 minutes.

Union secretary of Road Transport and Highways Alka Upadhyaya has urged chief secretary PK Jena to take appropriate steps at the earliest for the integration of both ambulance services.

As per the official sources, Odisha has more than 6,000 ambulances from both government and private sectors. While 624 ambulances are under its 108 fleet, 15 are at the disposal of NHAI. At present, the average response time of an ambulance in the state is 24.78 minutes.

Most of the major road accidents occur on the highways and there are many instances where there was a delay in shifting the victims to trauma care centres, resulting in fatalities, . “Efforts are being made to enable global positioning system (GPS) technology in all government/private ambulances in the state and bring them under Emergency Response Support System (ERSS) number 112,” said a senior official of the Commerce and Transport department.