NEW DELHI, January 17: Had the witnesses of the BMW accident or those who learnt about it immediately called up 1099 maybe a life or two could have been saved. The likelihood of the public knowing about the number is, however, very low according to Centralised Accident Trauma Services (CATS) officials. Says administrative officer A.K. Singh: ``They all know about 100 but few know that 1099 exists.''Besides when accidents take place and victims are moved to hospitals, the credit goes to the police or the fire department even when the job has been done by CATS, says ambulance officer Ravindra Bhati. ``No newspaper mentioned the fact that CATS vans were the first to reach the Gautam Nagar jhuggies during the namkeen incident in November last year and we shifted 56 people to hospital. Similarly we were there after the Wazirabad bus accident. We do not want credit. We want people to know about us so that they can make use of us,'' Bhati says.The trauma service which was started in 1992 by the Delhi government had six vans till 1997. Now it has a total of 25 vehicles, 20 of which are in working condition. Fifteen of these operate from hospitals like LNJP, Hindu Rao and GTB. The CATS pager number is 9632-001099. A CATS van is manned by two persons who are trained to drive, communicate on the wireless and administer first-aid. They work in 12-hour shifts. ``We reach the site of accident in six minutes flat,'' says CATS ambulance officer Sandeep Singh who is with Gama 13, the CATS post at LNJP hospital. ``Had someone dialled 1099 after the BMW crash, the CATS unit called Gama 21 would have responded,'' says Singh. Gama 21 does not have a point of operation and is currently sharing space with Gama 25 at the Charak Palika hospital. It has been scheduled for a place at AIIMS.Shortage of vehicles or staff is not one of their problems though 20 vehicles cannot be said to be enough for a densely populated metro like Delhi. ``Let the available infrastructure be fully utilised first,'' says the administrative officer. ``At present we get an average of two-and-a-half calls per vehicle. We are a 24-hour service. Shouldn't a vehicle of ours be working for at least 21 hours?'' he asks. Monthly calls reach upto 1,500. In June last year, the calls peaked to 1,600 and most calls were from the PCR.There have been instances of misuse by the few who know about the service. ``We were called to a house in Mukherjee Nagar and asked to take an 80-year-old man, a former freedom fighter, to the hospital. His son and daughter, who had their own vehicles, were not even willing to touch the man. They just wanted somebody in the middle of the night to take their father to the hospital free of cost,'' Bhati says. ``But we do not stop to verify calls for help. We just reach wherever we are called,'' he adds.
