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.
I am much pleased with your work. You put very helpful information. I just want to thank you for sharing your information and your blog is simple but attractive.
ReplyDeletewww.airambulancedelhi.co.in/air-ambulance
When you use a genuine service, you will be able to provide instructions, share materials and choose the formatting style. Air Ambulance Services
ReplyDelete