Agency running ALS ambulances warned by health minister

Health minister Siddharthnath Singh on Tuesday gave a stern message to GVK – the agency running the advanced life support (ALS) ambulances in the state – for including faulty vehicles in the fleet.

GVK director was told that if such an incident occurs again, the firm will be blacklisted.

He sought a report on the technical faults reported in 11 of these ambulances soon after they were flagged off by the chief minister recently in a function. A news report was carried in this regard by Hindustan Times.

The minister asked additional chief secretary medical and health Arun Kumar Sinha to prepare a detailed report on the issue.

The GVK is running 1,488 (108) ambulances and 2,270 (102) ambulances in the state. The firm was also given the task of running 150 ALS ambulances also.

However on the first day when the vehicles were flagged off, the staff in 11 of them found some noise in the equipment following which the ambulances had to be sent to the workshop before being deployed in various districts of UP.

Meanwhile, in a meeting with a delegation of World Bank (health, nutrition and population), the health minister finalised a pilot project for strengthening of OPDs and emergency wards at 10 hospitals in the state.

Based on its success, the model would be replicated to other hospitals.

The strengthening would be done keeping in view the needs of patients and also the problems faced by patients and staff of the hospitals.

It was also decided that volunteers who worked for the pulse polio programme and helped eliminate polio in the state would be included in the programme to control/eliminate Japanese Encephalitis in the affected areas.