Unavailability of ambulance costs a life

MUMBAI: Steven Fernandes, 73, died after delays in ambulance response during a heart attack. Family struggled to secure timely, proper medical transport.

MUMBAI: In the early hours of Thursday, when Steven Fernandes, a 73-year-old Andheri resident, was teetering between life and death, his family was scrambling for an ambulance to rush him to hospital. Fernandes had just suffered a heart attack.

Representative image (Bachchan Kumar)

“At 2am, my husband and I were incessantly dialling all the numbers we could find to call an ambulance,” said Mohua Gupta, daughter-in-law of the deceased. They first dialed 108, the state emergency response service. The call either did not go through or the number connected to 103, the police helpline.

The family lived just five minutes from a private hospital and 20 minutes from the civic-run Dr R N Cooper Hospital, yet they were unable to get through to either facility on the phone.

A quick online search for ambulances in the vicinity led them to a private vendor from Andheri East. “We were relieved he was willing to come and turned our attention to our father as we waited for the ambulance to arrive,” said Gupta.

In the meantime, Fernandes lay unconscious on the bed. “He weighed over 100 kg, so we couldn’t take him to hospital in our car,” said Gupta. “The private ambulance took over 40 minutes to arrive even though it was past midnight and there was no traffic,” recalled Gupta. Moreover, the family was shocked to see only a driver and a helper; no paramedic staff and no physician. There was no stretcher, only a rubber mat for the patient to lie on. “Also, there was no equipment like an oxygen tank or masks,” she said.

Before her father-in-law could be moved, Gupta received a text message charging her ₹5,500 for the service. “We were really upset and they brought it down to ₹2,500 but we paid them as it was not the time to argue,” she recalled.

After the ambulance left, the family dialed 108 again, only this time the call was diverted to Cooper Hospital and the ambulance reached them in 30 minutes. But, by then, the Golden Hour, the critical 60 minutes after a heart attack, was up and Fernandes’s pulse had flatlined. The Golden Hour is the crucial window where prompt medical intervention can save lives.

“Ideally, a cardiac ambulance equipped with an intensive cardiac unit and a cardiologist should tend to a cardiac patient. At the very least, the ambulance should have a doctor and paramedics attending on the patient. They can administer drugs if needed, Direct Current Cardioversion (DC shock) and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR),” said Dr Suhas Pingle, a health activist.