Port Blair, Sept 13: Mr. Vishal Jolly, Former State President & Core-Committee Member, BJP A & N Islands & Member, Home Ministry Advisory Committee, GoI requested for directing all private airlines operating in A & N Islands to admit/accept stretcher patients for undertaking to & fro journey on medical emergencies through a letter addressed to the Union Minister of Civil Aviation, Mr. Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia.
In his letter Mr. Jolly stated several points for immediate intervention and early action such as the residents of A & N Islands don’t have any specialised medical treatment facilities to attend and manage with any medical emergencies due to lack of adequate medical infrastructures. Therefore, we are completely dependent upon the States like Tamil Nadu (Chennai) and West Bengal (Kolkata) for the purpose of undergoing any emergent medical treatment.
In order to reach Chennai and Kolkata for undertaking any emergent medical treatments, we are completely dependent upon Air India flights as no other private airlines admit & accept stretcher patients and consequently the Air India faces enormous pressure to manage all the patients of entire A & N Islands. Resultantly, the people of our Islands suffer while facing such emergent medical issues, which at times take away innocent lives.
Even while returning back after undergoing emergent medical treatments from any places, as aforesaid, the stretcher patients are not allowed to undertake return journey to Port Blair by any private airlines.
The patients are faced with another big issue and that is the availability of tickets. It has become a usual problem that the patients, especially the stretcher patients are not able to avail journey due to non-availability of air-tickets.
Furthermore, any patient required to undergo any specialized medical treatment at either Chennai or Kolkata are faced with exorbitant rates of tickets which becomes an additional burden on them as every patient is required to travel with at least one family member as attendant and apart from the huge medical bills, he/she is burdened with these unavoidable additional expenses.
Moreover, the stretcher patients, wheel chair patient as well as any patient who are required to undergo specialised medical treatment should be given some subsidy on to and fro tickets or at least a flat fixed rate be fixed for them while undertaking journey.
Further Mr. Jolly stressed that the following issue requires personal intervention of the Minister for providing necessary relief to the Islanders.
