Bengaluru: The demand for air ambulance services has been increasing since the outbreak of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many covid patients are being airlifted from small cities to bigger ones and vice versa.
These services used to transport 5-10 critical patients from smaller cities like Mysuru, Hubballi-Dharwad, Koppal and Ballari to metropolitan cities till April. But during the second wave, the demand rose to 20-30 patients per day.
Amit Dutta, managing director, BLADE India said, “Queries for air ambulances went up significantly, especially from people in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. We received at least 20-30 queries a day for our air ambulance services.”
Small businessmen, actors, officials, executives, doctors and politicians availed of these services.
Last year in November, Labhu Ram, Hubballi-Dharwad police commissioner who fell severely ill was airlifted to Bengaluru. He recovered within 15 days.
This year in May, wife of M Rajendra, BJO state secretary was airlifted to Manipal Hospitals in Bengaluru as she has Covid complications.
Dr Shalini Nalwad, cofounder and director of, International Critical Care Air Transfer Team (ICATT), said, “I get around 30 calls every day. It is hard to say no, but we also have to prioritise which we do by triaging.”
Dr Rahuk Singh Sardar, cofounder of ICATT said that people avail of these services to save time.
Some aggregators and charter plane operators said that the high costs of the air ambulance services did not make people hesitant to avail of them. Earlier, transporting a patient from Hubballi to Bengaluru would cost Rs 3-4 lakh, it would be an extra 3-5 lakhs if the patient is Covid positive.
An air ambulance in operator in Bengaluru said, “Transporting Covid patients is a difficult operation, the most important being isolating patients and crew. Air ambulances have to be equipped with isolation pods- mandated by the Union Health Ministry for ferrying Covid-19 patients. This, in turn, has pushed up costs.”
As per the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, only 18 companies are authorised to operate air ambulances with 26 aircraft cleared for medical transportation.
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