When every minute counts: How green corridors are becoming lifelines in Noida-NCR

When every minute counts: How green corridors are becoming lifelines in Noida-NCR

Noida, A journey that would ordinarily be measured in traffic signals and minutes was reduced to a race against time: A donor heart travelled nearly 20 kilometres from Hindon Airport in Ghaziabad to a hospital in Noida in just 16 minutes, as traffic police cleared the way for the ambulance carrying it.

When every minute counts: How green corridors are becoming lifelines in Noida-NCR

The heart, donated by a woman in Chandigarh, was flown to Hindon Airport by air ambulance before being transported by road to Fortis Hospital in Sector 62, where it was successfully transplanted into a 62-year-old patient, officials said.

Noida DCP Abhay Kumar Mishra told PTI that the green corridor was created between Ghaziabad and Sector 62, with traffic regulated along the route to minimise interruptions on September 9.

"A green corridor spanning approximately 20 kilometres was set up from Ghaziabad to Noida Sector 62. At 2 pm, the heart was transported from Hindon Airport by ambulance and, travelling by road, reached Fortis Hospital in Sector 62 in 16 minutes," Mishra said.

The episode illustrates the purpose of a green corridor: Temporarily coordinating and regulating traffic so an ambulance carrying an organ or critically ill patient can move through a city with as little delay as possible.

But the September 9 journey was not an isolated instance in the National Capital Region. Noida, Ghaziabad, Delhi and neighbouring cities have repeatedly coordinated such corridors in recent years, turning what was once an exceptional emergency response into an increasingly familiar part of time-critical medical logistics.

In August last year, Noida traffic police created a six-kilometre green corridor from the DND Flyway to Child PGI in Sector 30 to facilitate the transfer of two premature twins. The ambulance reached the hospital in about four minutes, officials said.

The twins, a boy and a girl, were born at 26 weeks at a private hospital in Delhi's Najafgarh and weighed around 700 grams each. They were in intensive care and suffering from severe respiratory and digestive complications, according to Child PGI officials.

On June 2, 2025, Noida, Ghaziabad and Delhi authorities coordinated a 17-kilometre corridor from Yashoda Hospital to Fortis Escorts Hospital, enabling a live donor heart to be transported in 19 minutes.

On January 8, 2025, Noida and Faridabad police coordinated a 46.4-kilometre corridor between Amrita Hospital in Faridabad and Yatharth Hospital in Greater Noida for the transportation of a kidney. The distance was covered in 24 minutes and 40 seconds.

The use of such corridors in the region also predates these recent cases.

On October 1, 2021, traffic police created a 14-kilometre corridor from the Delhi-Noida Chilla border to Jaypee Hospital in Sector 128, allowing an ambulance carrying a harvested organ to cover the stretch in 14 minutes. A separate corridor was also deployed that day between Sector 14-A and Jaypee Hospital for another organ-transplant-related emergency.

For healthcare professionals, the value of a green corridor extends beyond spectacularly short travel times. It is about removing avoidable delays at a point when the medical clock is already running.

Dr P N Arora, chairman and managing director of Yashoda Group of Hospitals, said green corridors could be "invaluable" when every minute matters, particularly during organ transportation and other time-critical emergencies.

He said their effectiveness depended on coordination between hospitals, police and traffic authorities, ambulance teams, airport authorities where required and transplant coordinators.

Pre-planning and regular drills could further help identify delays and improve responses before an actual emergency, Arora said, adding that drivers also needed greater awareness about why traffic was being cleared for such journeys.

"Though green corridors cannot replace time-critical medical intervention, they can be part of the solution to ensure that given resources are not wasted," he said.

Dr Akhil K Rustagi, senior director and head of cardiology at ShardaCare-Healthcity, noted that green corridors were particularly relevant in cardiology because delays could affect outcomes in acute emergencies.

"From a cardiology perspective, timely transportation is particularly important in cases of acute heart attack, where delays in reaching a facility capable of providing definitive treatment can result in greater heart muscle damage and affect the chances of recovery," Rustagi said.

He said the same coordinated approach could be useful when critically ill cardiac patients need urgent transfer between hospitals for specialised care.

According to Rustagi, real-time communication, pre-defined routes, GPS-enabled ambulance tracking and regular emergency drills could strengthen the system, while continued cooperation between healthcare institutions and civic authorities could make the mechanism faster and more reliable.

The repeated green corridors across Noida and its neighbouring cities point to a broader challenge: In a densely populated and heavily trafficked urban region, medical emergencies do not wait for traffic to clear.

A green corridor does not create additional medical resources or change the condition of a patient. What it can do is remove one variable the time lost on the road. For a heart waiting to be transplanted, a critically ill newborn or a patient being rushed to specialised cardiac care, that lost time can be crucial.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.