In 100 minutes, police shift critically ill patient to Mohali

Nitin Jain

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, January 16

In a first, the Ludhiana Commissionerate Police today facilitated a critically ill patient to get a fresh lease of life by shifting him from Ludhiana to Mohali within 100 minutes.

The cops created a 125-km green corridor criss-crossing five districts for providing an uninterrupted route to the ambulance carrying the only son of a Ropar family.

Brainchild of the Commissioner of Police (CP) Rakesh Agrawal, the humane initiative helped Manpreet Singh, 33, to catch on time the air ambulance at the Mohali airport, from where he was shifted to Mumbai for lungs’ transplant.

Both lungs of Manpreet, an engineer, had got damaged while fighting Covid. While he recovered fully from the “Chinese virus”, his vital organs got 80 per cent damaged during the course of treatment at a hospital in Ludhiana.

With damaged lungs, the patient was shifted to another hospital in Ludhiana, where he was kept on oxygen and ventilator support, which further deteriorated his body parts.

As his heart and brain were working fine, the doctors at the Ludhiana hospital advised him for lungs’ transplant to save his life.

Since the facility was not available here, the aggrieved family reached a private hospital in Mumbai, where the doctors assured lungs transplant while confirming the availability of the vital organs as well.

But the only condition put forth by the Mumbai doctors was the minimum time in which the patient could be brought to them.

The family arranged the air ambulance for shifting their lone breadwinner from Ludhiana to Mumbai, but due to bad weather and dense fog, it could not land at the Halwara air base and instead made it to the Mohali airport, the other nearest air location available.

In view of the critical condition of the patient, the doctors advised the family that the patient could not survive if he was shifted by road through normal course, which could have taken almost three hours due to the dense fog that had engulfed the entire route from Ludhiana to Mohali this morning.

The aggrieved family somehow reached the Ludhiana Police chief, who immediately responded and asked his men to create a green corridor from the Ludhiana hospital to the Mohali airport.

Acting swiftly on the CP’s order, the Ludhiana Commissionerate Police deployed a pilot and escort vehicle with the ICU-equipped ambulance, which carried the gasping-for-life patient all through the 125-km distance in just 100 minutes.

“On humanitarian grounds, we provided the necessary help and coordinated with our counterparts in Khanna, Fatehgarh Sahib, Patiala, and Mohali districts to provide a hassle-free non-stop passage to the patient in adverse weather conditions,” said Agrawal, while lauding the role of his force in successfully carrying out the first-of-its-type operation through the busiest roads in almost zero visibility.

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