Health minister: most Russian regions ambulance response time is 20 minutes
TYUMEN, December 21 (Itar-Tass) - Russia’s health minister has said that ambulance vans in most of Russia’s regions respond to patients’ phone calls within extremely tight deadlines, 20 minutes at the most.
“We have 20,000 vehicles equipped with the GLONASS navigation system,” the health minister, Veronika Skvortsova, told the media on Friday. “We keep track of their movement along the routes and we have managed to ensure 82 percent of our ambulances arrive on site within 20 minutes in all territories of the country.”
Skvortsova acknowledged that certain problems were still to be addressed.
“We have regions with vast territories and low population density,” Skvortsova said. A special air ambulance service program has been developed for such territories, for instance, for the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area.