Creativity and health emergencies

Prior to 2004 Pakistan had no organised emergency medical system. In that year the rescue 1122 service was trialed in Lahore and rolled out across the province in 2006. It operates in every district and the service has become a benchmark for emergency response in the developing world. It is supported by the Emergency Services Academy and has achieved an average response time of seven minutes, putting it on a par with emergency response services in the developed world. It has become a quiet and largely unsung success story, and the model is being replicated across the country. Good as it is the service has difficulty accessing some of the more remote and thickly populated urban communities — to say nothing of fighting its way through the traffic in our congested cities.

Thus we welcome the announcement by the Punjab chief minister of the launch of a motorcycle ambulance service in all nine divisions of the province starting in October. For the first time emergency medical care will be available to those living in areas inaccessible to four-wheel ambulances. The project is supported by the Turkish government and the CM thanked the Turkish president and prime minister for their support.

It may be recalled that a not dissimilar project was mooted by the Aga Khan Health Service (AKHS) in the mid-1990s and was to operate in the mountainous areas of Nagar and Hunza, north of Gilgit in the then Northern Areas. It proved impractical, but this most recent iteration, using modern communications systems and trained paramedics has a far better chance of achieving its objectives. Creating emergency response systems is expensive, time consuming and requires political commitment to sustain once established that reaches across successive administrations. The Rescue 1122 service has done just that. The service has thrived despite the daily blizzard of false calls made by people who think they are merely playing a prank, uncaring of the waste of resources their ‘prank’ may result in. No doubt there will be false calls to the new motorbike ambulance services as well, but we wish it every success.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 30^th, 2017.

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