Victims will be entitled to cashless medical care of up to Rs 1.5 lakh per person per accident for the initial seven days of hospitalisation.
Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday informed the Rajya Sabha about the expansion of a cashless treatment programme for road accident victims.
Victims will be entitled to cashless medical care of up to Rs 1.5 lakh per person per accident for the initial seven days of hospitalisation, with the government facilitating payments to remove financial barriers to immediate treatment. He said this while replying to a question.
The initiative, which was initially tested in some areas and is now implemented throughout the entire country, is designed to provide immediate medical attention through the collaboration of state governments without any prior payments.
Furthermore, he declared that the administration is preparing a framework to facilitate the deployment of dispatch-specific ambulances to the locality of the emergency within a span of ten minutes. The minister introduced the strategy to launch a unified emergency helpline connected with the latest ambulance services.
In modern technical settings, the latest ambulances will be used for faster casualty evacuations to accident sites, he mentioned that the targeted response times as low as 10 minutes in specific zones are being aimed at.
The ‘Rah-Veer’ program, introduced in 2025, will acknowledge the brave individuals who help seriously injured accident victims by introducing them to the community as ‘Rahaveer’ himself would do, as well as awarding them with a cash reward of Rs 25,000 (which previously was Rs 5,000), the minister informed the assembly.
This program is aimed at encouraging the bystanders to take actions during the crucial period of – the ‘golden hour’ – after an accident occurs.
The minister added that these ambulances will be equipped with specific tools for vehicle-diving interventions and will support the medical personnel who are often left undone without them.
The central ministry will sign MOUs for the supply of such special ambulances and take care of the costs as long as the ambulance reaches the place within ten minutes.
The Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways said during a session in the Rajya Sabha that, according to a report by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), almost 50,000 deaths annual from road accidents in India could be prevented with immediate medical treatment.
In a bid to reduce unfavorable delays in emergency care, which has been a decisive factor in numerous deaths, the minister declared improvements to the already existing schemes that would encourage public participation and assure that treatment would begin immediately.
Gadkari stated that road safety is a “very serious issue” and reiterated the government’s commitment to the worldwide goals of cutting road traffic deaths and injuries by half by 2030 in accordance with the Stockholm Declaration. Measures which will be implemented together are the tighter rules on vehicle safety (like star rating systems), the more rigorous actions taken by the police as well as the punishing of the contractors when they are responsible for the poor quality of the road.
