The 102 Free Ambulance Service is an emergency medical transport service in Uttar Pradesh. It is also called National Ambulance Service (NAS). Under this service, all the ambulances are fitted with GPS system (for easy tracking) and other necessary medical equipment. This emergency transport service facilitates 24x7 free of cost service to pregnant women, newborn babies and their mothers as well under the Janani SurakshaYojana and Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram. The ambulance service provides first aid to the patient and transport them to the nearest Community Health Centre or Government hospitals. Around 1 crore women and newborns have benefited from this service, till now. On an average Uttar Pradesh receives around 65,000 calls are received and 25,000 trips serviced on any working day.
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History
102 National Ambulance Service was started on 17 January 2014 in Uttar Pradesh. A fleet of around 2272 Ambulances is operational in all the districts of the State, till date.[1] This service is provided through a private service provider Ganapati Venkata Krishnanreddy Emergency Management and Research Institute GVK-EMRI which provides free ambulance services under government-run helplines in 17 states and union territories in India[2]
Operation
It consists of an Emergency Response Centre (ERC) which is a centralized call centre that receives and handles the emergency phone calls. The call centre is staffed with Emergency Response Officers (ERO) by GVK-JSS in Aashiana, Lucknow. They take the emergency call, determine the location and send an ambulance to the place. That ambulance reaches the patient in 20 minutes in cities and around 30 minutes in rural places. Around 65,000 calls are received on an average for the 102 service in Uttar Pradesh
Beneficiaries
According to the GVK-EMRI’s Chief Operating Officer in Uttar Pradesh, Sanjay Khosla, around one crore and fifty seven lakh people have already been benefited from the 102 and 108 services in Uttar Pradesh since 2013. Of these around ninety lakh women have already benefited from the 102 services alone