432 ambulances for REHT scheme: Rosaiah

Hyderabad, Sep 22 (UNI) Andhra Pradesh Minister for Medical and Family Welfare K Rosaiah today said under the Rural Emergency Health Transportation Scheme (REHTS) a total of 432 ambulances would operate across the state.

Addressing a press conference here, he said each segment would cover about 1.3 lakh population.

He said the scheme would be implemented under public-private partnership with Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) here.

The memorandum of understanding between EMRI and the state government for operating this scheme all over the state was signed today, he added.

The scheme was one of the three flagship schemes being implemented under National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), launched by the Union government last year, and Reproductive and Child Health-II (RCH-II) project in the state to reduce infant mortality rate and maternal mortality ratio.

He said under the European Commission Sector Investment Programme and Andhra Pradesh Economic Restructuring Project (Health component) the REHT scheme was taken up in Kadappa, Kurnool, Mahaboobnagar and Nizamabad districts and also in all the tribal areas of nine districts and 122 ambulances were being currently run.

He said the state government had appointed the EMRI as state level nodal agency to operatonalise the remaining 310 ambulance segments.

He said the government would make efforts to bring in 122 ambulances already running under the scheme into the common telephone number system of the EMRI for better coordination.

He said the EMRI would provide free transportion to the public using these ambulances and the government would release funds available under the NRHM/RCH-II project to the EMRI for running these 310 ambulances.

UNI BR GKT 2000