Solving another major problem, the Andhra Pradesh government has hired over 1350 ambulances, spread across the 13 districts in order to cope with the workload. These ambulances will be used to transport Covid +ve persons from one hospital to another or from the citizen’s residence to a hospital or Covid Care Centre. The authorities have made it mandatory for collectors to hire at least 2 additional ambulances per mandal.
If necessary, the collectors have been given the right to hire as many as needed, depending on the workload. In certain mandals, even 5-6 additional hospitals have been hired in order to provide better services to the citizens.
These ambulances will help the authorities implement the recently introduced ‘referral system’, as per which, the hospital referring the patient will have to arrange for an ambulance to transport the patient apart from informing the receiving hospital.
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To ensure smooth functioning, a call center has been setup in every mandal. The local health workers,doctors and hospitals have been given the call center number using which they could call for an ambulance.
Speaking about the same, Commissioner, Health and Family Welfare, Kattamaneni Bhaskar said , ‘ We already have 1 108 ambulance per mandal but due to the increased workload, in an attempt to decentralize things further, the districts have been instructed to hire at least 2 additional ambulances per mandal exclusively for transporting Covid +ve persons. These aren’t critical patients . While the minimum is 2 per mandal, there is no upper limit. Districts have been given the right to hire as many as needed. ‘
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