Lack of Well-Equipped Emergency Trauma Centers and Trained Manpower in India: AIIMS Head

The provision of essential emergency trauma care, like pre-hospital care, is absent in many states along with the lack of trained manpower for dealing with such cases, said experts."In some states, these are very primitive without state-of -the-art ambulances, trained manpower and proper organization in definite geographical areas," said MC Mishra, AIIMS Director at the East Asia Summit (EAS) Round Table on Trauma Care and Nursing.

He further noted that while "some states have adopted the Universal Emergency Number 108 for ambulance, police and fire and the current systems run on GPS/GPRS, these are not backed by proper legislative and regulatory control over manpower training and organizational aspects".

Highlighting the challenges in trauma care systems in India, Mishra said that the secondary and tertiary healthcare infrastructure presently cannot cater to the needs of multiple trauma patients and that there is lack of trained manpower which can effectively cater to seriously injured patients at all levels of the healthcare.

"There is a lack of well-equipped emergency departments across the country. There is a lack of trained manpower that can effectively cater to the seriously injured patient at all the levels of healthcare (primary, secondary and tertiary). The concept of a Trauma Team is non-existent and, often, the persons taking care of the patients are not adequately trained or skilled in life saving-protocols and procedures," he said.

He also stressed on the need for good data collection and trauma-related research. Also, a good trauma system, Dr Mishra said, includes rehabilitation care hospitals that are integrated to trauma centers.

The present meet is being held amongst the East Asia Summit (EAS) participating countries in pursuance of a commitment made by the Prime Minister of India on October 10, 2013, in Brunei Darussalam wherein Indian had proposed an initiative for cooperation among East Asia Summit members by organizing the East Asia Round Table on Trauma Care and Nursing.

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Of the 18 EAS countries, 11 are attending the conference which is being held at AIIMS and has been organized by the Union health and foreign ministries. 

Source-PTI