EMERGENCY MEDICINE DIES WHO CARES????

After transporting a 60 year old lady of acute stroke from Bagdogra on 27.05.2011 by a so called Air Ambulance I have received innumerable phone calls as to WHY I DID THIS?
Just two days after the tragic crash of Delhi Apollo Air ambulance there are many questions which need to be answered. Let me list them for you

1. Why DGCA was indifferent when they knew that these aircrafts were not suitable to transfer critically ill patients? ( Refer to mail today article below )
2. Why there are no rules as on date on Air Ambulance transfer given to Aircraft operators and Hospitals?
3. Is it safe to travel at night on such calls and on such aircrafts?
4. Delhi Government has come out with extraordinary rules as per standard of Ground Ambulances and this has shown the country the way forward. Will they take up this issue also?
5. Two ER Physicians (Ask me if you don’t know the meaning of this word ) and a male nurse died in a tragic crash. Are we bothered or are we in the queue?
6. We invest in PET CT, High end Cath labs or State of the art OR but what about this. Are we ready to rethink

I do think a mere condolence note will not DO this time. ( At least not with me).

WE ARE WAITING BUT HOW LONG?

SHOULD WE WAIT TILL ANOTHER ONE OR TWO OF US DIE?????


http://www.apollohospitals.com/news_detail.php?newsid=136

Chartered flight carrying Apollo team and patient crashes. Our heartfelt condolences.
26/05/2011
We express our heartfelt condolences towards the unfortunate demise of Shri. Rahul Raj, our patient from Patna and the team of Apollo caregivers and doctors who were with him in the chartered plane that was transporting them from Patna to our hospital at Delhi. The plane service was provided by Air Chartered Services and the plane crashed into a residential area near Faridabad.

Mail Today E-Paper: No DGCA guidelines for air ambulances in the country
May 27, 2011
No DGCA guidelines for air ambulances in the country
By Ajmer Singh in New Delhi
http://epaper.mailtoday.in/Details.aspx?boxid=1439515&id=53903&issuedate=2752011
THE FARIDABAD crash has exposed chinks in the armour of the Director General of Civil Aviation ( DGCA) - there are no guidelines for designating aircraft as an air ambulance and there are no rules on the type of aircraft that can serve as an ambulance in the sky or medical equipment to be carried onboard. This leaves critically ill patients at the mercy of hospitals, which fleece them.
Top- end hospitals, in connivance with aircraft operators, allegedly force patients to hire planes at exorbitant rates.
" These are commercial operations in the guise of air ambulances and, in the absence of rules, these planes are placed in the non- scheduled operators category," an official said.
Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharati faced a similar problem last week, when her brother was to be air- lifted from Gwalior to Delhi. The hospital insisted on hiring its own air ambulance, sources said. After much persuasion, her brother was allowed to be evacuated in a different aircraft but doctors created a ruckus over oxygen availability onboard, oblivious of the fact that the same cylinders are used in an air ambulance as in hospitals.
Bharati, when contacted over the phone, declined comment.
Aviation expert Capt. V. K. Kukar said: " Till date, there is not a single aircraft in India which is a dedicated or designated plane for medical evacuation only. By removing seats and putting stretcher inside, it doesn't become an air ambulance." A senior DGCA official, requesting anonymity, admitted there are no norms in place for air ambulances. The hospitals, however, insist on calling these flights as air ambulances because there is a stretcher and oxygen cylinder onboard.
" These smaller aircraft are meant to carry coffins and not critical patients," he said. " It is not advisable to use singleengine aircraft, that too at an altitude of more than 11,000ft, for air ambulance operations.
The lighter single- engine aircraft are also not equipped with Cockpit Voice recorder ( CVR) and Flight Data recorder ( FDR). The preferred option should be either scheduled flights or twin- engine B- 200, which has a back door to bring in a stretcher," an official said.