Hyderabad will have Emergency Medical Service (EMS) and disaster management units on the lines of Pune within a year. The initiative to set up such units had been taken by the Osmania Medical College Old Students Association (OMCOSA).

According to Nandan Singh, president, OMCOSA, their initiative had been well received by the state government and some non-government organisations. OMCOSA, which has virtually snatched the initiative from two leading corporate hospitals in the city - Apollo and Medi Citi - plans to follow the Pune model being run by the Symbiosis Centre for Health Care (SCHC).

For the EMS, Hyderabad will be divided into five zones (Pune has three zones) with each zone having one emergency medical service unit. The five zones will be under a central command office. Each unit will have specially trained doctors, paramedical staff, volunteers and experts in EMS and disaster management.

According to Nandan Singh, a network of three-digit telephone number (like 105 in Pune) will be provided to the five units and the central command office, with the nearest unit from the caller's place responding to the call. The units will be equipped with ambulances, fire brigade vans and fire-fighting equipment and life-saving emergency medicines and oxygen cylinders. The Association has asked the government for wireless sets connected via satellites.

OMCOSA has taken the decision at a CME (continuing medical education) programme on EMS, which was addressed among others by Dr Balasubramaniam, an expert in EMS and disaster management from Los Angeles, and Dr Rajiv Yeravdekar, Director, and Dr Rajiv Rajhans, course coordinator, SCHC, Pune.

It may be recalled that two corporate hospitals in Hyderabad had organised international conferences on EMS in the last two months. The first meeting, organised by Apollo Hospitals under the banner of Society for Emergency Medicine in India (SEMI), had decided to prepare a common code and prescribe standardised quality services with the help of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (India) and other associations and individual hospitals. All stake-holders, including private, public and government institutions were to be involved in the process.

The conference had also decided on an action plan to ground a pilot project, Hyderabad-Guntur Highway Project, to provide emergency care of international standard. As part of this project, Hyderabad would be developed as a model metro, Guntur as a model town and the highway linking the two places as a model highway. The conference decided that 1066 would be the National EMS number and all other numbers existing now would have to be withdrawn.

An executive committee with Dr Mabel Vasnaik, Head of Dept of Emergency Medicine, St John's Hospital, Bangalore, as president, to prepare a common code and recommend suggestions for setting up a national committee on EMS, was also constituted at that meeting. It has not met since then and the fate of the committee is not known.

The second international meeting was organised by Medi Citi Hospitals in December. As part of the three-day CME programme, a Roundtable was held on EMS, with Dr Arul Raj, president, Indian Medical Association, as chief guest. The speakers stressed the need for a uniform code and a national committee on EMS. As the Roundtable failed to reach a consensus, Dr Arul Raj left the meeting half-way, asking the participants to spell out the national policy with the help of the foreign delegates and also suggest the names of experts who could be included in the national committee.

Dr Hari Prasad, head of the Emergency Medical unit at Apollo and convenor of the SEMI conference, who was also present at the Roundtable, said the Hyderabad-Guntur Highway Project would be launched on March 9. The government has constituted a committee to implement the project. But most of the participants raised doubts about the seriousness of the project with a government nominated committee put in charge of its implementation.

Interestingly, SCHC representatives had attended all the three conferences and presented papers and demonstrated the functioning of the EMS model in Pune.