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Maharashtra's ambullances

With the number of ambulances rising threefold in the state, Maitri Porecha delves into the anarchy with which these emergency response vehicles operate in absence of rules and regulation.

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Teen’s death shows why it must be treated as an emergency

Life in Mumbai is cheap. And death comes easily. Thirteen-year-old Mohammad Safwan lost his life when oxygen ran out in the oxygen cylinder in the private ambulance car that was carrying him from Mumbai to Surat.



Safwan was being treated for inflammatory myofibroblastic tumour of the liver in Mumbai.
He was brought to Mumbai six months ago after hospitals in Surat and Ahmedabad failed to diagnose the exact nature of the tumour. The recurrent growth of the tumour had led to deposition of pus in his abdomen. For the last several days Safwan was being treated at the KEM Hospital. For reasons not known his parents suddenly decided to take him back home in Surat.

“Doctors aspirated the pus multiple times. But the tumour kept coming back. We had been seeking treatment at Bhabha Hospital in Bandra and KEM Hospital in Parel for over six months. Doctors had given up hope due to his delirious condition. We were exasperated and running out of money. So we decided to ferry him back to Surat,” said Abdul Salam, Safwan’s father who is a peon in a Surat-based workshop that manufactures engineering spare parts. Safwan had expressed a wish to meet his grandparents and his siblings Salman and Sanoba, who were in Surat.

On the morning of June 25, Salam asked one of the ambulance drivers stationed outside the bustling KEM Hospital gate to take his son to Surat. The driver, Sanjay Shedge (35), agreed to take Safwan in his Maruti Eeco ambulance (MH 01 LA 9419) to Surat.

 “The doctor had advised us to keep him on a constant supply of oxygen as my son had lately developed some difficulty in breathing. The oxygen mask would give him comfort and relief. I asked Shedge and he said the oxygen cylinder in the ambulance was full. He assured us that the cylinder would last for at least 10 hours,” said Salam.

The drive from Mumbai to Surat is an arduous 350 kilometres along Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway. It takes up to six hours to make the journey. But the cylinder ran out of oxygen in less than three hours.

“We sought discharge from KEM hospital and left Mumbai around 12pm in the ambulance. At 3.15pm as the vehicle was pulling in at Vapi in Gujarat, my son started developing difficulty in breathing. My wife Rukhsana was sitting in the patient’s cabin by Safwan’s side. She alerted me about his discomfort and I asked the driver to park the ambulance.
The driver checked the cylinder and informed me that it had run out of oxygen,” he said.

The driver took them to a hospital in Vapi. But it was too late. Lack of oxygen for up to thirty minutes claimed Safwan’s life. “Having realised the blunder, the driver refused money and asked us to take my son’s body from Vapi to Surat in another vehicle. He then took off for Mumbai,” said Salam.

When dna asked the driver if he had received any training in operating the oxygen cylinder he replied in the negative. “I had checked the cylinder before we left with the patient and it was full. I have only one cylinder of 46 litres capacity in my car. However, when I checked at Vapi after the parents alerted me, the cylinder had emptied,” said Shedge.

Experts say that it is dangerous for private ambulance cars like Maruti Omni or a Mahindra Jeep to ply with merely one oxygen cylinder. “It is absolutely unacceptable.

Every ambulance should carry at least three oxygen cylinders, a jumbo one, a medium one and a portable one. Also there should be a paramedic to constantly monitor oxygen levels in the cylinders so that in an emergency a patient can be shifted from one cylinder to another without causing him any discomfort,” said Dr Percy Bharucha, director, Lifesupporters Institute of Health Sciences, Bandra.

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