Uttarayan celebrations: 20 pc rise in emergency calls to 108 than normal days

A GVK EMRI official said that the forecast is made by using previous Uttarayan-day related data from the past three to four years and the data for normal days is taken as a 10-day average of normal, non-festive days.

“In 90 percent of these cases, we take the injured person to the hospital and in some cases we attend to them on the site. Some of these cases can also include road accidents which may have been caused by thread cuts… The road accidents caused due to thread cuts, will be recorded under thread cut injuries. So of the 245 cases, there may be an overlap with vehicular trauma cases and non-vehicular trauma cases. Since 108 only provides paramedic services, we do not have a record of the final outcome of the persons who suffer these injuries, so we do not know how many succumbed to the injury after being taken to the hospital,” said the GVK EMRI official.

Injuries sustained from falls doubled on Uttarayan compared to normal days and were in tandem with the forecast made by the emergency services.

Ahmedabad recorded the highest such incidents (73) followed by Surat (35), Vadodara (27), Bhavnagar (20) and Rajkot (19). Incidents of physical assault across the state saw a 260 per cent increase from a usual day and was 15 percent higher than GVK EMRI’s forecast.

The GVK EMRI official said, “While we do see incidents of falls on regular days, on Uttarayan we see more incidences of falls as well as more serious falls including falls from terraces. We also see frequent fights breaking out in terraces during Uttarayan leading to physical assault and such incidents of physical assault also increase in tribal areas.”

Vehicular trauma accidents doubled on January 14 compared to a normal day and the GVK EMRI official attributes this to increased vehicular movement during festivals.

Notably, while Ahmedabad (101) saw the highest animal emergency related incidences reported through its animal ambulance helpline ‘1962’, Surat (155) led the way in bird-related emergency calls followed by Ahmedabad (147).

On January 15, as the festivities of Uttarayan continued, as of 6 pm, GVK EMRI had attended to 180 cases related to falls and had recorded 323 vehicular trauma incidents until then.