The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Trauma Centre in New Delhi is in the final stages of getting a rooftop helipad — after a decade-long wait — which will make it the country’s first government hospital to possess a facility to receive accident victims and critically ill patients airlifted to the institution.
The application for clearance to get the helipad operational by the start of next year is ready and will be sent to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the aviation regulator, within a month for clearance.
Once the helipad gets operational, critical patients will be airlifted from accident sites on highways and bordering states and hard-to-reach regions, and then, depending on the response, the services will be expanded to within the city.
“For an apex trauma centre, it is imperative to provide air ambulance services to treat patients within the ‘golden hour’, which is ideally within two hours of an injury. All developed countries have this facility, and when AIIMS Trauma Centre was being set up, the helipad facility was one of the important components,” said Dr MC Misra, former director of AIIMS.
Read more of this in a report by Rhythma Kaul published in the Hindustan Times... (Link given below)
