SHILLONG: Traffic jams have become a part of the daily life here in Shillong. The ambulance care (in the picture) was trapped in a gnarly gridlock for more than 10 minutes at Polo market at 7 pm on Wednesday.
The roads were so tightly packed, and the commuters so determined to get ahead, that it looked pretty hopeless. It was only after 10 minutes and a lot of shouting from the traffic officer on duty, that the ambulance finally got through.
These aren’t stray cases, death does strike aboard the ambulance too but there is no way it is declared as such. Most “brought dead” and “died en route” cases happen where there is a time lapse in shifting the patient from one place to another due to traffic snarls.
By law, cars are supposed to give way to emergency vehicles. In reality, that rarely happens, and drivers rarely pay attention to lane divisions. When an ambulance does show up, most drivers have a hard time figuring out how or where to pull over and due to the narrow roads, it becomes next to impossible for the ambulance to find a way to get through the heavy traffic.
The city has come a long way but its roads and infrastructures haven’t quite kept up. Our roads are not ambulance friendly. There should be a model where the hospital can coordinate with the police till the patient is picked up from the scene and reaches the hospital. It is every citizens responsibility to value the essence of time.
People should take into consideration about how they would feel if they were in the shoes of the patient’s family. Would they appreciate such attitude by others on the road?
(Contributed by Simran Lyngdoh, St. Anthony’s College, Mass Media Dept.)
