If you have travelled in long distance Indian trains, I am pretty sure you would have realized the requirement of an Emergency Medical Service in the train, if you dint feel it for yourself may be for a fellow passenger.

Consider a train journey which is more than 20 hours long, leave aside someone who isn’t well already before boarding the train, even a healthy passenger, who seems to be perfectly fine might undergo some health issues and might need a doctor. Occurrences of medical disorders don’t have an age bar these days, any disorder can be spotted in youngsters which earlier was known to be a disease of aged people only.

Probably keeping all the above discussed issues, the Board members of Ministry of Railways have finally decided to appoint a Doctor with other medical services in the long route trains.

The pilot project for having doctors on long distance train and for this pilot all the Duronto train has been chosen for one year, i.e. for almost a year, the Duronto trains will be having a travelling Doctor along with the medical services in trains, and this service will be free, without paying any extra cost.

As per this article on iGovernment -

“The doctor in the train will have advanced equipments like ECG, ophthalmoscope and glucometer for diagnosis. And for treatment they would be having access to equipment like portable suction apparatus, oxygen cylinder, various emergency management disposables and medicines.”

Initially the services will be monitored by railway officials on Duronto Trains and later the services will be available for other long route trains. Train superintendent will be the in-charge for the co-ordination between the ailing passenger and the doctor. Doctor will also decide if the passenger should travel further or be detained at the next railway station (nearest possible which has ample medical facilities).

Big thanks to Ministry of Indian Railways for thinking of and implementing this great step.