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India's Trauma Care Gap: Lives Lost on Roads
26 Jun
Summary
- No state has a complete trauma care system as mandated by the Supreme Court.
- Seven of eight high-fatality states lag in integrating emergency numbers into 112.
- Delayed emergency care contributes to at least 30% of trauma deaths in India.
India's alarming road safety record, with 1.77 lakh fatalities annually, is exacerbated by a significant lack of complete trauma care architecture across all states. Despite a Supreme Court order from May 26, 2025, mandating crucial measures like a common emergency number and GPS-equipped ambulances, not a single state has achieved full compliance. This deficiency critically impacts the "Golden Hour" post-accident, vital for saving lives.
Seven out of the eight states accounting for two-thirds of accident deaths are struggling to merge emergency numbers into the 112 Nationwide Emergency Response System. Furthermore, essential safeguards for Good Samaritans, who risk harassment for assisting accident victims, are absent in many regions. This neglect of trauma response infrastructure, a decade after a significant Supreme Court order and years after the Good Samaritan Rules were notified in 2020, results in approximately 30% of trauma deaths being attributable to delays in emergency care.
States also lag in establishing trauma registries, with many relying on manual data. Only a few high-fatality states have a system for tracking ambulances with GPS, and even fewer make this data public. Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are among those that have made ambulance tracking dashboards public, but real-time integration with the 112 NERS system remains a challenge for most, hindering efficient response times to accidents.
