Govt plans 1,200 trauma centres along highways

To provide quick medical assistance to road accidents victims, the Centre is planning to set up trauma centres along national highways.

The Ministry of Road Transport and National Highways identified 1,200 places to set up trauma centres along national highways in next two to three years with the expenditure of around Rs 3000 crore. “These spots were identified based on repeated accidents occurred on national highways,” an official from the Ministry told Deccan Herald.

The ministry is also planning to rope in private sectors — mainly hospitals and NGOs — to set up the centres. “The ministry will provide them around 15,000 sqft area at Re 1 lease rentals for setting up such centres,” said the official.

With medical experts suggesting that a road accident victim survival chance is always high if taken to a trauma care centre within the ‘golden hour’, the government is working on such directions to provide immediate medical care, added the official. Despite the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) guidelines making mandatory that one trauma centre for every 100 kilometres of highways, it was not happing due to lack of funds or not availability of land. With 5 lakh road accidents annually in which 1.5 lakh people lose lives, the ministry is working on a project to retrofit existing national highways by correcting black spots where maximum road mishaps are recorded.

“The retrofitting including correcting black spots, building flyovers, foot over bridges crash barriers, service lanes and under passes,” NHAI chairman Raghav Chandra told Deccan Herald recently.

In the absence of sufficient safety measures, large number of accidents have been happening either due to bad design, narrow roads or lack of facilities for pedestrian crossings.  Based on the deaths reported from fatal highway stretches during the three years from 2011 to 2013, the road transport and highways ministry identified 726 black spots.