No operative for trauma centre

The accident on the Mumbai-Pune expressway that killed 17 leaving 43 injured on Sunday morning, has once again brought to light that the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC)’s plans to start trauma care centre and air ambulance service on the Expressway remained only on paper since 2012. According to sources, the MSRDC is struggling to find an operator to run the trauma care centre along the expressway.

The centre was proposed with the intention to provide immediate medical aid to victims of the accidents on the expressway in the golden hour, that is the first hour after the accident, which is crucial in order to save the victims’ lives.

“We had constructed the trauma care centre in a single storey structure at Ozarde near Talegaon toll booth parallel to the Expressway in 2015, but we are yet to find any operator for it. There have been many social organisations visiting the site and we expect to find an operator soon,” said a senior MSRDC official.

“On Sunday morning after the accident there, two quick response vehicles of the MSRDC and the police vehicles were used to take the victims of the accidents to MGM hospital,” said a state highway police official.

In the absence of any medical aid on the expressway, the victims are forced to go to MGM Hospital in Kamothe near Panvel or to Lonavala directly as no aid is available along the length of the expressway.

The air ambulance services are supposed to become operational once the trauma centre is operational and it would also have Level IV health facility in order to provide immediate surgical care.

The MSRDC has been planning to make the expressway a ‘zero fatality zone’ in the next four years and one of the priorities for it is also to have a trauma care centre.

E-way’s Deadliest hours According to the state highway police data, the Expressway is the deadliest between 3 am and 8 am when many truck and bus drivers fall asleep and thus either meet with or cause accidents. Ninety six out of the 280 accidents that took place on E-way from January 2016 to February 2016 of bus and trucks were due to the driver going into median or going off road after falling asleep while driving between 3 am and 4 am.