What do you remember when you see an ambulance?- Of course, an emergency service established for shifting patients to the hospital. This emergency service is available in most of the hospitals and comes into action when we dial 102, 108. Unfortunately, in a recent case, the carelessness of an ambulance driver deteriorated the health condition of a patient and caused the patient severe injuries on Feb 28 in the industrial area of Hassan, Karnataka. This is not new as this incident occurred in Kerala, Delhi, Mumbai which were horrible and innumerable.

There are many reasons for the cause of such incidents. Some of them which I noticed are that the ambulance drivers are not well equipped about the situation. Some of the hospitals train the ambulance drivers for a short period to handle critical medical cases that arise. Hospitals always have a shortfall of drivers so they are forced to hire the untrained ones which at times are fatal. The other reason for such incidents is the overburden working hours of the drivers

However, there are a few measures that can be implemented to prevent these situations. They are:

• Well-trained drivers should be hired from different provinces of the city.
• Select shortcut roads with less traffic to avoid delay and damage.
• Plan certain shifts to avoid overburden working hours of the drivers.

They have to be taken by the government. Hence, I request the government to look into these small issues which create bigger chances of risk.

- Ratam. Neha

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