Some of you might even wonder whether I have lost my sense of mathematical comparison and some others might think whether I am referring to the number 108 with some spiritual significance for chanting names! But people from USA would immediately relate to the number 911, which is used for Emergency situations. Yes, I am talking about Emergency Response services.
Yesterday, I had an opportunity to visit EMRI at Hyderabad, which is popularly known as 108 Emergency Response Service, and I was requested to give a talk on some of the medical research work that I am involved with. I was also given a tour of all the services provided at EMRI. I was very much impressed with the facilities and the wonderful services provided by EMRI. I really believe that EMRI has changed the way the poor people in our country get access to world class emergency response services.
EMRI (http://www.emri.in/ ) handles medical, police and fire emergencies through the "1-0-8 Emergency service". This is a free service delivered through state-of-art emergency call response centers and has over 2600 ambulances across Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Goa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Assam, Meghalaya, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. With the expansion of fleet and services set to spread across more states, EMRI will have more than 10,000 ambulances covering over a billion population by 2011. As an Indian, I was proud to know that EMRI 108 has already overtaken the 911 service in USA. EMRI is currently the largest emergency service provider in the world, with capabilities to handle 200,000 calls per day, responding to 30 million emergencies and saving 1 million lives annually! And the best part was that our great ex-President, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was the main inspiration behind EMRI and to quote his own words "EMRI is a solution from a developing country for the developing world". It goes to prove strongly that with such INSPIRED TECHNOLOGICAL SERVICES, there is still HOPE for the poor in our country and also CONFIDENCE for the Youth that INDIA VISION 2020 (http://www.indiavision2020.org/ ) will be a reality!!!
Arvind Thiagarajan
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