A pregnant woman in labour pains was ferried in emergency to a local hospital by some cops on a chair as snow filled roads in state capital buried the possibility of calling an ambulance, earlier this week. The benevolent cops walked on snow for over ten kilometres to save the life of mother and the child.

Similarly, in an interior village of Mandi, an elderly and ailing citizen was taken to hospital by villagers on a locally made wooden palanquin like structure on their shoulders by walking 20 kms on snow on Wednesday.

All this happens in routine and quite haphazardly in Himachal Pradesh, where not only in the snow bound areas in winters but in remote belts, which are not connected by road, the people carry patients on their back or by any other mode downhill to reach the road head. More often than not, the posturing hurts the patients and could be risky while on way, especially in case of the pregnant women.

All this, however, could have been avoided, had the government okayed the proposal of ‘dolis’ (flexible stretchers) to transport patients in emergency from tough terrain to nearest road, linking it with 108 emergency ambulance (free of cost 24×7) service in Himachal, three years ago.

Official sources said the proposal of the GVK-EMRI, the service provider of the 108 emergency ambulance service, which was initially taken up by health authorities keeping with their need in the hilly terrain with much interest, was finally shelved for reasons unknown.

Sources said the policy makers could not visualise the significance of the ‘dolis’ in connection with the 108 emergency ambulance, which has been a success story in HP so far as saving lives is concerned.

As per the proposal, the GVK-EMRI had identified 160 remote villages across ten districts of Himachal, barring the tribal areas of Kinnaur and Lahaul Spiti, which involved a walk of more than an hour to reach the main road.

Once the patient reached the road with the help of a ‘doli’, he or she could be transported to the nearest health institution in 108 ambulance.

Sources said a ‘doli’ is just like a flexible stretcher to ferry the patient as required.

The shape of the stretcher could be changed to suit different emergencies from a cardiac patient to the one with spinal problems or the pregnant woman in labour pains.

The cost of the ‘doli’ was around Rs.7000.

As per the plan, the village health committees could have managed the ‘dolis’ at local level by deploying volunteers in case of emergency.

“Since our project was successful in Uttarakhand, which has a similar tough terrain, we had pushed it forward in Himachal also. We had even floated tenders for the ‘dolis’, but the project could not take off,” said Mehul Sukumaran, who heads the operations of GVK-EMRI in HP.