Saviour on a bike

Asha'ar Rehman

FOR some time now, PML-N ministers in Lahore have been telling everyone how important the metro bus and the ever burgeoning roads have been in providing relief - even of the medical kind - to those who needed it. In times of emergency, people could reach hospitals by taking these sleek roads and these fast buses. How else? Well, they have just been provided an answer by the ultimate authority: The motorcycle ambulance ridden by a personage no less than Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif with his usual pomp and fury.

The motorcycle ambulance is promoted, with much reason, as the remedy for a city with narrow lanes. It is a befitting response to the emerging situation in a sprawling city whose roads have been increasingly cluttered by urban development carried out at a speed that separates Lahore from other parts of the country. The 'invention' is going to be tied to the existing rescue system which has survived despite having its origins in the Pervaiz Elahi era which is often dismissed by latter-day Sharif loyalists as an aberration. It took the Shahbaz government quite a lot of effort to recognise the importance of the groundbreaking work done by the Pervaiz Elahi set-up in the area. As a compliment to continuation and perseverance, that has paid dividends in subsequent years, this motorcycle ambulance, unprecedented in the country for its scale and for government patronage, is the latest addition.

Mr Shahbaz Sharif says the incident of a Kasur woman who couldn't be transferred to a hospital quickly enough for medical aid was his inspiration for the 'novel' idea. Maybe some of us would point out that, if we are talking about the same case, the innocent woman from Kasur died because of lack of proper first-aid facilities at the hospitals she was taken to. But let's not look for a dispute, nor grudge any credit here. So great are our expectations of the motorcycle ambulance that we would be best advised to not raise objections over minor details. Instead, we may limit ourselves to a prayer that Shahbaz Sahib will eventually take up hospital reforms in a big way, and dread the time when God forbid, he is not in charge of operations in Lahore for good reason or bad.

The motorcycle ambulance is yet another example of how Shahbaz Sharif takes the lead in bringing concepts home. The motorcycle ambulance has been seen on the roads of many countries all over the world - in a throwback to the First World War days when similar vehicles were employed to ferry injured soldiers to treatment points.

Closer to home, and from where we get so many of our modern-day solutions, the system is in place in parts of India. It is running in Chhattisgarh, in Bangalore and there's this gentleman in West Bengal who won an Indian civil honour for his innovative motorcycle ambulance that he has been operating in service of the people around him.  Lahore does appear to be a city fit for such a service. 

By arrangement with the Dawn