In the year 1999, Ms Sushmita Das and her husband, Dr Subroto Das (a Padma Shri Awardee) met with a life threatening accident on Indiaโs busiest highway, NH8 connecting Delhi to Mumbai. They fought death, while stranded for 4 ยฝ dark hours on a rainy night. It is there where โOur Storyโ began! Lifeline Foundation and its world acclaimed Highway EMS - Highway Rescue Project (HRP) was born out of that physically unbearable and mentally distressful experience, the Founding Trustees had to undergo. Without losing hope, they fought for their own lives and that of their co-passengers. At around dawn, they finally managed to get some help. Ms Sushmita and Dr Subroto Das used their recovery time to crystallize this new and innovative idea.
The couple had a singular focus: "We were lucky to be alive, letโs ensure others donโt die on the highways."
With this focus, they worked with friends, brainstorming on various ideas to ensure that accident victims reached the safety of a hospital and that lives and limbs were not lost on the highways.
Three years thence, post overcoming various barriers, the couple implemented the idea of an integrated and centralized network of ambulances and other rescue utilities. The idea was new, refreshing and life-saving. Without owning a single facility, Lifeline Foundation built a network of ambulances, cranes, metal cutters, hospitals and blood banks and co-ordinated with police to launch Highway Rescue Project (HRP) on 263 kilometres of NH8 on 1st of July 2002 between Ahmedabad and Surat.
Manually mapping the highway to incorporate each and every named and unnamed landmark, Lifeline developed a GIS to locate the caller - in case of an accident, when India did not even have GPS! A 24 hour control room with no precedence of this magnitude in South Asia was set up. Soon, 98250 26000 became the Lifeline for all highway users in the state of Gujarat. Overtime, as success stories of our saving lives and limbs of highway accident victims spread, corporates and other non-profits joined in the effort. From 263 km of highways and a network of 17 providers in Gujarat the organisation spread to work across 5 states โ Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Kerala and West Bengal with a total network of 1000+ providers across 6000+ km of National Highways in a period of 4 years, intervening in 15,000+ accidents, transporting 20,000+ accident victims to the safety of hospitals. The never ending zeal, backed by the vision to ensure that lives are not lost because of lack of emergency care led us to broaden our horizon. Soon, along with various other stakeholders, we helped catalyse EMS Ahmedabad and EMS Vadodara as participative city-based EMS.
In 2004, government took notice of our work, as did corporate leaders including Mr Ramalinga Raju, Founder Chairman of the erstwhile Satyam leading to the birth of 108 services in India. In 2004 also, the Government of India finally took steps to include Emergency Care as the 4th E of Road Safety.
Post the Tsunami in 2004, we were called to help train and set up the 110 system in Sri Lanka in 2009. Footprints in Bangladesh followed in 2010 and in Nepal post the earthquake.
An important chapter now in โOur Storyโ is our effort to empower the bystander to intervene in emergencies, medical or road traffic accidents till an ambulance arrives. First Aid and CPR training is the disruptive innovation we want to bring about in EMS.
Lifeline Foundation celebrates its 19 years of Nation Changing work today! We thank each and every one who have been a part of this journey. And we look forward to touching more lives in coming years.
