Maharashtra Highway Police will be launching a statewide initiative Mrityunjay Doot across all national and State highways in Maharashtra. As part of this initiative, the police will rope in local villagers, dhaba walas, petrol pump walas, doctors and hospitals to make optimum use of the golden hour in case of an accident. The police will also be providing training to the locals on how to administer first aid in case of an accident. The police intend to prepare 1,500 people as Doots across the state. This initiative is launched with an intention to bring down fatal accidents on the highways.
"Whenever an accident takes place, the most important thing that comes into play is the Golden Hour. It is the most precious hour in which the injured has to be administered medical treatment. Currently, it takes anywhere around 90 minutes to two hours to rush an injured to a medical care centre. Also, we have seen that locals who mostly act as first responders do not know what are the basic first aid and medical steps that need to be followed to save an injured person. Our target is to bring down the fatal accidents by ten per cent. From March, we would start an initiative known as Mrityunjay Doot across the state wherein we would work towards bringing down the numbers of death in accident cases," said additional director general of police, state highway traffic, Dr BK Upadhyay.
Explaining more about this initiative, Dr Upadhyay said, "Under this initiative we would rope in highway police, local police, local government bodies, health department officials, dhaba walas, toll naka walas, petrol pump staffers and villagers who would work as Mrityunjay Doots. We will give them basic training on how to respond when there is an accident and would also provide stretchers to them which they can use during an emergency. We intend to create a force of 1500 Mrityunjay Doots and would also provide I-Cards to them and we would also appreciate and reward their work. I would also like to inform you that anyone who helps an injured person will not be harassed either by the police or by the hospital."
As per the police, most fatal accident cases are witnessed in Nashik, Pune, Ahmednagar, Solapur and Latur. There are 98 national highways and 378 state highways which are currently being manned by 3000 police personnel from the highway police.
