EAM S Jaishankar lauds work of India-funded Suwa Seriya Ambulance Service in saving lives

In a tweet, the EAM said the Ambulance service has responded to five million calls so far, since it was set up in 2016, and that India is proud to be its partner in saving lives.

“Heartwarming to visit the 1990 Suwa Seriya Ambulance service in Colombo. “Impressed by your record and achievements: Responded to 5 million calls to date. “India is proud to be your partner in saving lives," he said.

The ambulance project took off following a simple plea made by the former non- cabinet Minister and present Colombo district parliamentarian Dr. Harsha de Silva along with then Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe to the visiting Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi (in March 2015) for an effective and smooth Ambulance Service.

The brainchild of the ex -Minister Dr. Harsha became reality as Prime Minister Modi walked his talk by giving a worthy gift of a health package in the form of an effective ambulance service to Sri Lanka where hospitals faced an acute shortage of ambulances, newswire.lk said.

In 2016 the Suwa Seriya Ambulance Service was launched with the grant of USD 7.6 million from India.

In the initial phase, the hospitals of the Western and the Sabaragamuwa provinces were given the much-needed ambulances.

The project was started with a fleet of 88 ambulances.

India gave a further grant of USD 15.2 million to get this project expanded island-wide.

With the launch of this Free Ambulance Service, the people of Sri Lanka were given the facility of calling for an ambulance under the four digitals 1990 to rush the victims of accidents and other critical patients to hospital.

Currently, there are over 300 ambulances that are at service covering all the provinces of Sri Lanka.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has promised that 112 new vehicles would be added to this fleet.

The Indian Government gave this gift under one condition.

It asked that the project be taken over by the Government of Sri Lanka eventually.

Currently, this lifeline ambulance service has got over 1,400 staff of whom 709 are health technicians.

The Ministry of Health has set up the Suwa Seriya Foundation, a semi-government, not-for-profit organization for smoothly running the free ambulance service.

The emergency medical technicians are given training at the GVK EMRI in Hyderabad, India. All the technical personnel get refreshers in India to enhance their services.

During the peak of Covid, this ambulance service played a major role in rushing the affected people to the hospitals for quick medication and treatment. India is also building 60,000 houses for the plantation workers of the up country.

(With UNI inputs)