MAY I HELP YOU: The EMRI team at work at the call centre at the Byrraju Foundation. Photo: Mohd. Yousuf

HYDERABAD: It logged over six lakh calls, handled 14,683 emergencies and saved 1,000 lives with an average response time of less than 30 minutes. All this in less than six months of the launch of its operations.

Launched on August 15, 2005, "108", the trademark of Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI), has become a model which every State is trying to replicate. In a short span of time, the most recent initiative of the Byrraju Foundation and Satyam Foundation with Satyam Group's Founder and Chairman, B. Ramalinga Raju, has become the most comprehensive, integrated and successful emergency management system in the country.

Urgent intervention

The EMRI's USP, CEO Venkat Changavalli says, is its response time and pre-hospital care for people close to death in emergencies that require urgent intervention of the medical, police and fire departments. "Surveys have shown that 80 per cent of deaths take place in the first hour of admission and so even the `Golden Hour' is too long for many. Hence our focus on the `Platinum 10 minutes' by providing fully-equipped, air-conditioned ambulances complete with defibrillators, ventilators and echo cardiograms."

Having crossed a milestone by saving 1,000 lives, the EMRI has a six member-team of experts from the American Academy for Emergency Medicine in India coming over to review the functioning and suggesting improvements. Apart from random sampling and case-to-case reviews, the team also conducts a training programme for call takers, dispatchers, doctors and over 100 each of emergency management technicians and ambulance pilots, as the drivers are called.

Seven locations

Started with the Byrraju family contribution of Rs. 34 crores and a 40-acre campus that housed the erstwhile Satyam Public School, the EMRI is located in Devar Yamzal on the outskirts of the State capital. Since the twin cities' operations began on August 1, 2005, 108 is now available across seven locations with 30 advanced life-saving ambulances operating round-the-clock. The locations include Hyderabad, Tirupati, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Warangal, Bhimavaram and Amalapuram.

EMRI's Vision 2010 is responding to two million calls a day and saving two million lives a year, meeting global standards, sums up Mr. Venkat.

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