108 ambulance services hit across Karnataka due to technical glitch at call centre

While the issue has been rectified temporarily, a complete resolution is possible only by Monday, says GVK-EMRI CEO

Patients requiring emergency ambulance services were in for a shock on Saturday evening when the 108 Arogya Kavacha call centre suddenly stopped answering emergency calls. The problem spilled over on Sunday and officials attributed this to a technical glitch at the call centre. Although the issue was rectified temporarily by evening, officials said a complete resolution is possible only by Monday.

On Sunday, while many patients had to opt for private ambulances, several others had to undergo hardship.

A 65-year-old woman in Idihalli of Madhugiri taluk, who required emergency medical service, died at her residence as the family was not able to get a 108 emergency ambulance. Taking note of this, Principal Secretary (Health) T.K. Anil Kumar said he will get this probed.

The 108 Arogya Kavacha service, run by the State government on a public-private partnership model (PPP) model with GVK-EMRI, was launched in 2008.

GVK-EMRI Chief Executive Officer Hanumanth R.G. told The Hindu that the problem occurred owing to a technical glitch in the motherboard of the 14-year-old server in the emergency response centre (ERC).

“Although our engineers tried to repair the motherboard, that was not possible as the software did not support it. Also, as the server is an outdated one, the spares are not available now. While we usually get an average of 9,000 emergency calls a day, we have hardly received around 2,000 calls since Saturday night. While the phone rings for the caller, all calls did not land on our system and hence could not be connected,” he explained.

“Usually, a call gets connected in two-three minutes. But due to this glitch, either calls did not get connected or took more than eight minutes to land,” he said.