Piyush is the Founder & Managing Trustee of the Save Life Foundation. Ever since the death of his cousin Shivam Bajpai in a road accident in year 2007, Piyush has been working to establish a network of like-minded individuals and institutions to achieve his goal of reducing the mortality rate on Indian roads. Piyush is a graduate from University of Delhi and works with the Calibrated Group, a US-based private equity fund, as the head of its India business. Prior to joining Calibrated Group, Piyush was involved in setting-up and managing the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), a public-private partnership between the Government of India and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

The Save LIFE Foundation (SLF) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization focused on enabling Bystander Care, the immediate care that Police and public can provide emergency victims, especially those of road accidents, to enhance their chances of survival. Bystander Care will continue to play a key role in saving lives given the massive traffic congestion across most Indian cities, which hinder quick movement of EMS vehicles.

Over the past 2 years, Save LIFE has trained over 2500 Police first-responders in Delhi leading to a significant enhancement in survival rate of accident victims due to administration of basic emergency care to victims. Their immediate goal is to establish a community based and community driven emergency response service that will see over 8000 public volunteers in Delhi being trained in Basic Trauma Life Support skills, connected through a call centre so that they can be mobilized as first-responders in the event of a medical emergency, especially road accidents.
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This morning, while on my way to this talk, I met with this situation – Scooter towing a car with 20mtr long rope. Someone went in between…and we had to rush the youth to a hospital!!

Road accidents – Nation loses 18 people every hour in road accidents, world No. 1 in road accident deaths. It is an epidemic with the high economic implications –

– no rules
– no post care
– not bothered
– bad design

Why are the accidents so high? Categorized into four blocks –

– No licensing, no training
– No civic enforcement
– Road design and engineering
o

Road user conflict
o Largest and smallest non motorized on same lane

– Lack of post accident care
o

Not getting care in the golden period

This situation is unacceptable..what do you do about it?

Road accident victim… why people don’t help

– people are afraid of police harassment

So SAVE LIFE established in 2008 – challenges

– fractured system both legally and

Middle part of the chain is what we wanted to target

– Help on the road immediately
– Police or any help vehicle
– Advanced care immediately

Can we start with educating and training police personnel?

The first target we approached the police commissioner. Delhi has 650 vans. We want to train the 3000 personal, on basic trauma save support. In 3 months we trained them. In 2008, the survival rate of police was 71%. Post the training the reports show survival rate went up to 93%. That was only because there are many who were handling the basic three things very well.

We have got the request to train 4500 more personnel from police. NSG commandoes after 26/11?

How do we get people to involve more people like you and me? Can we do something? How do we get Delhi, to nominate citizen volunteers?

Any one who is trying to help road accident victims will not be harassed. We have now 8500 potential volunteers from Delhi Police. We are in the process are training them in basic trauma support and we plan to connect them. One of the big criteria called mobility..

Technology solution …
· call the four digit number..
· call center conveys the info all volunteers about where the accident happened…
· press 1 to accept and reach the spot to give basic relief…
· police will then move within the 15 minutes of providing the basic trauma..

We have created a parallel system from govt where community service is playing a great role.

· In rural thane this project is being implemented – Vasai and Kharghar blocks, you will see boards and action in Navi Mumbai.

· We have taken community combined technology, healthcare and volunteerism.

· We are encouraging cities, towns and communities to adopt the model to execute in the city.

· Strength of this model lies in Rural India far more, since the big medical centers are far away, almost three hours.

A few challenges that we face in design is…

a. Spine boards – fibre glass spine board costs 98K rupees. Throwing a challenge to develop a low cost spine board, I will make sure that I will sell 1mn of these. We need to give dignity to people and to make them survive with working spine.
b. I went to Harvard leadership program on health. Indian designers have better skills to make low cost version for India
c. How to pull someone stuck inside the car without harming him or her.

SaveLife foundation, A-316, Ansal chambers – piyush@savelifefoundation.org