Haryana eyes to add 129 ambulances, 10 for Gurugram to cut response time

Health officials say the expanded fleet will be deployed across districts to improve emergency coverage in both urban neighbourhoods and villages.

The state health department is planning to procure 129 new ambulances in the upcoming months, including 10 for Gurugram, to take emergency response services to remote locations, officials said on Tuesday.

Officials aim to improve coverage by synchronising routes and placing vehicles in high-demand zones as average response times remain above targets. (HT Archive)

The new vehicles, including those equipped with advanced life support (ALS), basic life support (BLS), and patient transport ambulances (PTAs), are aimed at maintaining the average emergency response time under ten minutes, officials explained.

“The private agency hired for the project will begin the delivery of 70 ambulances by June this year. These newly PTAs and vehicles equipped with ALS and BLS will be delivered, with around three to four expected vehicle allocations to each district,” said Dr Yadvinder Singh, deputy director of the state’s Referral Transport Scheme launched in 2009.

Singh said that another 59 ambulances will be outsourced, including two ALS for each district, around the same time period.

“All ambulances in the existing fleet are geo-tagged and have a GPS-enabled tracking and monitoring device, integrated with Dial 112/108 systems,” he added.

As per Centre’s guidelines, there should be one vehicle with ALS and four with BLS availablein the district’s health facilities, along with four stationed ambulances at the Civil Hospital and one each in the sub-division hospital and primary health centres (PHCs).

With the expected additions to the fleet, the district’s health department is planning to synchronise routes to serve all urban and rural pockets. “By strategically deploying the ambulances at high footfall areas and in residential quarters, we want to ensure that the average emergency response time stays below ten minutes,” Lokveer Singh, chief medical officer of Gurugram, said.

As per the National Health Mission (NHM) data from January 2024, around 598 ambulances in Haryana transported 360,000 patients between 2023 and 2024. The average emergency response time remained 14.2 minutes between 2017 and 2024.