Sixty-seven-year-old Maria was fast sinking at the Chengannur district hospital after she was moved there from a relief camp following a severe heart attack on Tuesday.
She was very dehydrated, having low blood pressure and pulmonary oedema (water in the lungs because of heart failure caused by heart attack in this case), and was in need of specialised care.
It was then that Rahul Singh Sardar and his team of expert paramedics descended on a chopper, essentially an intensive care unit on wings fitted with state-of-the- art equipment, stabilised her and was about to airlift her to the Government Medical College Hospital, Alappuzha, for advance treatment.
Rahul Gandhi’s gesture
“But we were denied clearance for take-off as Rahul Gandhi’s [Congress president] chopper was also about to take off at the same time from the Christian College campus at Chengannur. Hearing about the situation, Mr. Gandhi came to us, inquired after the patient and let us have the priority in take-off, which was a great gesture on his part,” recollects Dr. Sardar.
Maria is now making good recovery after her brush with near-death.
Trained in UK
Dr. Sardar and Shalini Nalwad, trained in Intensive Care Medicine and Aeromedical Transfers from the UK and with over 15 years of experience in National Health Service (NHS), were tending to critical patients at relief camps in Chengannur for a week.
The duo had immigrated back to India a couple of years ago, co-founded Bengaluru-based International Critical Care Air Transfer team (ICATT), and has since been carrying out highly specialised air-ambulance service.
Three teams
They had brought along with them their chopper and three teams of paramedics, including anaesthetists and intensivists with experience in aeromedical rapid response in pre-hospital trauma management by helicopters. While one team hit the field, the other two were kept on standby.
“We stabilised the condition of over 50 critically ill patients at relief camps in Chengannur and did the medical evacuation of two. We zeroed in on Chengannur, one of the worst affected areas, following discussions with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan,” said Mr. Sardar.
Command centre
The team set up a command centre at the Chengannur Health Mission building with the help of the Collector and parked their helicopter on the Christian College grounds.
A direct line of communication was established with the doctors at all the relief camps to triage and identify patients with deteriorating conditions.
“We adopted the ‘Track and Trigger’ model to seek out the critical patients before they deteriorate further, which is a critical care outreach principle followed in the UK and not usually done in disaster management,” Dr. Sardar said.
The system helped track deteriorating patients who were not responding to conventional treatment.
Once this was done, the team initiated the trigger, which was to send the medial team and copter, stabilise the patient using the equipment and, if necessary, airlift the patient to either of the medical college hospitals in Thiruvananthapuram or Alappuzha.
The team wrapped up the service on Wednesday and returned with the satisfaction of having done their bit for the disaster-hit people of Kerala.