Air ambulances rates soar with rising Covid cases | Economic Times

When Vasu D wanted to airlift his Covid-19-infected parents from his village in Tamil Nadu to Mumbai, he was in for a rude shock: the air ambulance charges were a minimum of Rs 25 lakh for a single patient.Like the prices of everything that’s become scarce during the pandemic – from oxygen cylinders and concentrators to certain medicines – the cost of hiring air ambulances to ferry Covid-19 patients has also surged.Some air ambulance operators have increased prices by up to 20% for Covid patients when many of them are gasping for proper healthcare facilities, said people aware of the matter. Brokers have increased their commissions severalfold and doctors who accompany the patients have increased their fees.ET verified the rates with air ambulance operators and brokers who didn’t want to be identified. The steep increase in air ambulance rates has been roundly criticised.“It’s absolutely inhuman,” said Mandar Bharde, managing director of MAB Aviation, an air charter service that also operates air ambulances, although not for Covid patients. “We deliberately stayed away from the Covid segment. But on our non-Covid air ambulance services, we don’t charge more than Rs 5 lakh-Rs 7 lakh.”Bharde said there have also been instances when brokers have charged patients but not delivered aircraft services.“It’s plain loot. I have ferried patients in my aircraft with no profit margins. But we have stopped doing it,” said Vankayalapati Umesh, managing director of Turbo Aviation Services, which also operates TruJet. “But there’s tremendous price escalation happening and it’s unfair.”Despite the exorbitant prices, demand for Covid air ambulance services has increased. The reason is twofold: patients from northern India, where healthcare facilities were overwhelmed are rushing to hospitals in the south such as Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Also, there’s been a rapid spread of the virus to smaller towns and villages, which lack the facilities to treat Covid-19, even as the second wave of infections appears to be ebbing in the metros.Patients from rural areas have a different story to tell — one of masses of people with fever, some dying, all without testing. Terribly worried that there is a Covid surge in rural India that is going largely unchecked and undetected, Arvinder Singh Soin, chairman of the Institute of Liver Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine at Medanta - The Medicity in Gurgaon, said in a Twitter post.“There is a massive increase in demand and influx of patients, especially to hospitals in the south, which have higher capabilities of supercritical care,” said Rahul Singh Sardar, cofounder of International Critical Care Air Transfer Team, an air ambulance service. It has provided free services in some instances, notably when actor and philanthropist Sonu Sood asked the company to airlift a critical patient from Nagpur to Hyderabad.“If we were getting 8-10 calls every day two months earlier, we are now getting 8-10 calls every hour,” he added.There are 20-25 aircraft that are operated as air ambulances now.To be sure, the cost of carrying a Covid patient is higher than for other categories of patients using air ambulances. Primarily, such aircraft need to be isolation pods equipped with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation to provide life support to patients.Singh Sardar said his company imports such pods from Germany at a cost of Rs 8 lakh each.“Also, such aircraft have doctors and crew. They increase their charges when they hear it’s a Covid patient being carried. That adds a lakh. The total cost could come to Rs 16 lakh for a Mumbai-Chennai flight,” said a person aware of such operations. “Even so, such an increase is extremely unfair.”“There are phases of development of this segment. India is in the first phase, wherein there is zero support from the state or medical insurance companies. Internationally, in almost every developed country, the costs are borne by the state,” said Jayant Nadkarni, former head of lobbying body Business Aircraft Owners Association.Vasu D ended up admitting his parents in a local hospital, where they are still critical.Despite the exorbitant prices, demand for Covid air ambulance services has increased. The reason is twofold: patients from northern India, where healthcare facilities were overwhelmed are rushing to hospitals in the south such as Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Delhi airport Friday said that it has registered nearly 100 air ambulance movements during the past one monthAlso, there’s been a rapid spread of the virus to smaller towns and villages, which lack the facilities to treat Covid-19, even as the second wave of infections appears to be ebbing in the metros.