Recently, there have been situations wherein rescue boats have turned out to be ambulances. A person in Ambedkar Jetty had to be taken to the hospital immediately. They were showing severe symptoms of COVID-19. One of the five rescue boats of the Kerala Water Transport Department, assigned for ambulance services, rushed immediately to the jetty with three persons covered in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and took the patient to the hospital.

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“These ambulance boats must have saved several hundreds of lives in the past few months,” says Shaji V Nair, director of State Water Transport Department. The rescue boats are used during flood time in Kerala when road transport becomes impossible and stranded people need to be taken to safety places. Last year, they also began to be used as an ambulance service when sick people had no other way of getting medical care.

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He cites the example of Perumbalam Island in Alappuzha, where more than 25,000 people live and public transport is not yet available. People depend on auto-rickshaws for traveling to places. The rescue boats are a great blessing to them, Shaji says.

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