POONAMALLEE HIGH ROAD TURNS A NIGHTMARE FOR AMBULANCES

POONAMALLEE HIGH ROAD TURNS A NIGHTMARE FOR AMBULANCES

Patient-Ferrying Time To Hospitals Goes Up By 30 Minutes On Stretch, Risking Lives

Omjasvin.MD@timesgroup.com

17.12.2021

Drivers of the 108 ambulance service dread getting calls to ferry patients along Poonamallee High Road (EVR Periyar Salai) from Thiruverkadu to Chennai Central. The many traffic bottlenecks along the stretch have turned into a nightmare, they say.

Merely removing these bottlenecks can help ferry patients to Government Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital (KMCH) and Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH), the tertiary hospitals located on Poonamallee High Road, at least 30 minutes quicker, they say.

Congestion at key junctions of Thiruverkadu, Golden George Nagar, Maduravoyal, Arumbakkam and Aminjikarai causes a delay in reaching KMCH, at least 10 km away, for Western Chennai residents.

At each of these junctions, TOI used a stopwatch to find that an ambulance is held back by an average of 3 minutes to 6 minutes at one place, accounting for a total of 30 minutes of stoppage time.

S Venkatachalam, a 108 ambulance driver who regularly ferries patients to KMCH along the stretch, said container lorries are the main cause of the problem between Thiruverkadu and Madurvoyal, sometimes bringing traffic to a standstill by up to 45 minutes. “After Maduravoyal, it is the commercial vehicles that are a hindrance,” he said.

The majority of calls for 108 ambulances on this stretch are to attend to accident cases, and with Tiruvallur GH being 30 km away, the rush to KMCH, the closest, is the most intense.

Apart from ferrying accident victims and emergency cases from Western Chennai, these ambulances also carry patients referred from Tiruvallur GH to either KMCH or RGGGH via Poonammallee High Road. M Vijayashankar, head of emergency at KMCH, said they avoid referrals from other hospitals as much as possible during peak hours. “Delay in presentation will definitely increase complications of emergency cases. People having a better traffic sense would help free the path for ambulances,” he said. Ambulances are live-tracked through GPS and emergency communication is continuously given, he added.

The Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project (TNHSP), which manages 108 services, in 2018 proposed to bring in automated signal clearance for ambulances and a pilot study was carried out along Poonamallee High Road. It never took off.

TNHSP project director Dr S Uma told they had given a proposal under the road safety fund through TNHSP but due to some technical issue at the police signal side and fund issues from World Bank, it was shelved.