Sunday, November 23, 2014

An Accident by the Road – Help or Ignore

This Children’s Day, our friends’ gang was just discussing the childhood memories and we had a great time creating some wonderful moments. One of the friends shared his great memories about the nursery rhyme ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and ‘Jack & Jill’. Before you really scream over your wish to listen it once again, here are the videos:


He interestingly shared some common features of these nursery rhymes:
1.    Both the nursery rhymes have two central characters.
2.    The creators of these nursery rhymes have been very cruel with these lovable characters. In both these nursery rhymes, the characters fell from the height.

And last and the most important,

3.    These characters were not offered any first-aid after they fell.

While we had a great laugh when he made the third point, it also made me ponder over this bad state of affairs on Indian roads. Providing first-aid to an injured on the road is a basic courtesy, which can be pull a person from close-to-dead to being alive.  First-aid is the medical assistance to a person suffering sudden injury to prevent the condition from worsening.

The Indian janta often seems to ignore to provide this basic courtesy. However, since this is not exactly what Indian values advocate, one is forced to think why Indians behave so. This might be possibly due to the reason that people are willing to help the injured strangers on the road but they are afraid of the medical and legal issues which occur in India when one helps an accident victim. Hospitals are not cooperative, they insist for blood relatives. Police isn’t cooperative either, since they have a long list of queries before leaving you with a promise to cooperate with police as and when the need be. Hence, despite having an intention to help, these external factors too contribute in lesser instances of medical assistance to the injured.

In this regard, I feel it important to let all know that Supreme Court has ruled in a couple of its judgements that an injured brought for medical treatment should be given medical aid to preserve life first and only then procedural criminal law should be allowed to operate. However, this helps only once the injured is brought to the hospital for medical aid. There is still no law in India which fixes a responsibility on its citizens to help the injured on roads. Accordingly, the need of the hour is creating a law that offers protection to those who help the injured strangers in road accidents. A strong law will surely go a long way in creating first-aid friendly and helpful society.

And before I end this issue, I will also like to share about an organization, which works for this cause. A few days before this discussion, I came across SaveLife Foundation, an NGO which was formed for improving road safety and emergency medical care in India. As I researched for the roots of the organization, Wikipedia gave me some interesting information. SLF was founded on 29 February 2008 following the death of Shivam Bajpai, Piyush Tewari’s 17 year old cousin, in a road accident in 2007. Piyush soon discovered that Shivam’s death was due to delayed care and that he may have been saved had he not have had to wait for 45 minutes for someone to rush him to hospital. Following thorough research that lasted several months, Piyush Tewari understood the gravity of this problem on a national scale and how prevalent were accident fatalities due to missing emergency care. He then invited his friend and mentor Krishen Mehta to join him in setting up the organization with a mission to enable Bystander Care – the immediate life-saving care that trained Police and community persons can provide road victims. Know more about the organization at http://www.savelifefoundation.org.

And next time you see an injured on the road, don’t hesitate to help him. You might be the difference and help save a Life.


This post is a part of Kids Hut activity at BlogAdda.com.

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