Need For Speedy and Skilled Emergency Medical Care

Soulfree is a small public charitable trust that is in its infancy. It was founded by Ms. Preethi Srinivasan, who is herself a quadriplegic, paralyzed below the neck and limited to a wheelchair.

Objective
The objective of this trust is to provide women with severe disabilities like spinal-cord injuries with hope and assist them in fulfilling their highest human potential by providing basic quality of life.

Medical Care – Where We Stand vs. Where We Ought To Be

In Western countries all one has to do in case of an emergency is to make one phone call. One phone call is all that is required to bring exceptionally well-trained personnel who know exactly how to stabilize and deal with the given problem in a professional and skilled fashion. However, in India, an accident or any other medical emergency spews out only panic and disarray. Accurate percentages can never be furnished to prove how many permanent disabilities have been caused, and how many precious lives have been lost through negligent, delayed, or unavailable emergency medical care. In a country where there is hardly any awareness at all of such a thing as spinal cord injury, how is one to expect any transparency in figuring out exactly where and how an injury occurred – whether it really happened at the moment of trauma, or if it occurred later due to mishandling and ignorant medical treatments.

Accidents cannot happen with proximity to hospitals in mind. It is a fact that most often accidents tend to happen in the most inconvenient, remote locations and at the oddest hours. In the case of a car accident happening on some remote highway in the wee hours of morning, what happens? In most instances in India, friends in another car or good Samaritans end up providing aid and these people do not have any medical knowledge. There have been so many cases where worse injuries have happened when accident victims were being extricated from the vehicle and taken to hospitals by friendly faces who mean well. There has been at least one documented case when a young girl (who was unable to communicate due to shock and paralyzed from a spinal cord injury) was taken by her friend to the nearest hospital, and was diagnosed dead by the doctor who was doing night duty in an intoxicated state. When the doctor ordered the friend to take the girl to the morgue, he cared enough to ignore the doctor and took her to another hospital.

The girl’s life was saved, but at what cost? The question is would she be walking around today – happy, young and healthy – instead of having to face the horrible notion of having to spend the rest of her life in the wheelchair – if only she had received proper emergency medical care and her spine had been stabilized immediately after the accident? In the long run the question is – as a society, how many bright and beautiful lights have and will continue to get extinguished or snuffed out due to our laxity? Whose fault is it? Who is going to be held liable? Will the government ever do anything? Will the private sector ever take any independent action? If everybody thinks that they are not the responsible party, what happens when innocents have to pay with their lives?

The other trend that is prevalent in India is that hospitals are really reluctant to admit “accident cases”. In another documented case, a hospital in Pondicherry refused to admit a patient who had been injured nearby, and ordered for the patient to be taken to Chennai, delaying possible life-saving medical attention by at least four hours. Whatever happened to oaths taken by these doctors to care for those in need, one may wonder. Another ghastly trend followed by many hospitals in India is the reluctance to undertake emergency procedures until and unless monies for the procedure are deposited by the family. What happens to serious medical conditions that are exacerbated due to these delays? Who is to be held liable for the damages in a country where there is no transparency or accountability? What is going to happen in this country where it is obvious that pieces of paper have more value than human life?

What Can Be Done?

Adopt-An-Area
Groups of companies can adopt areas and guarantee training for the emergency medical care staff in that particular area. Ambulances and mobile hospitals can be provided; nurses and other medical staff can be trained to stabilize accident victims until they can reach better facilities.

Training Programmers
Free/nominally priced CPR and emergency medical procedure training courses can be offered for the public and medical staff so that the general populace is more aware and knowledgeable.

Youth Awareness Drives
Workshops and awareness raising events can be held in schools and colleges to improve the awareness amongst the youth so that they know about the risks involved by undertaking dangerous activities. They may also be provided with the knowledge and basic training required that will save lives in emergencies.

Helicopter Service
Helicopter services equipped with emergency medical equipment and trained personnel can be made available in life-threatening emergencies in tandem with government agencies, the armed forces and NGOs. If such a service could be provided at any cost it would be worthwhile, as there is no doubt that many lives could be saved.

Petitions
If such cases can be documented and victims brought together to petition the government for more transparency and accountability into medical system, as well as to bring changes and reforms.

Voice for the Needy
The truth about most disabilities and illnesses is that many of them can be avoided completely or minimized to a great extent if they are treated immediately and skilfully; and prevention is always so much better than rehabilitation after the damage has been done, isn’t it?

The sad part is, the people who feel most passionately about this are the people and the families of people who have lost the ability to lead normal lives due to the system, and are finding it hard enough to pick up the pieces of their lives and move on. How can they fight the system without support and encouragement? Who is going to come forward and make sure that their voices are heard, not just to voice the tragedies of the past, but to make sure that such tragedies don’t happen in the future?

“Soulfree” has taken up the mantle to make sure that at least some of these voices are heard and awareness is created about how urgent and essential it is for our society — now and in the future — to develop a system in which speedy and skilled emergency medical care is available so as to avoid or minimize disabilities and loss of life. Let us all join together and help create a brighter future for everyone!

Any government support and aid to help such organizations which are performing an absolutely essential service to humanity will be welcome.

Written on behalf of Soulfree Charitable Trust

By
Soulfree Team.
24/04/2012
Thiruvannamalai
http://www.soulfree.org/
Please contact us at: soulfreeorg@gmail.com
Please call us at: +91-9952656756 / 04175-237245