IOC plans medical facilities at outlets
New Delhi   11-Jan-2012

Even as the Union Government grapples with its own proposal to provide free medical facilities to the poor, oil major IndianOil (IOC) is busy drawing up a scheme to provide the services of doctors and ambulances at its rural outlets in the country'.

Sources in the Health Ministry said that the corporation is in talks with Mum-bai-based pharmaceutical company which also runs a chain of hospitals in the city to provide the ambulances and the services of doctors holding a graduate degree at the-pumps.

The sources said that Petroleum Minister, Jaipal Reddy recently told senior IOC officials that as a part of their corporate responsibility they should think in terms of organising medical camps at its rural outlets where it could provide certain medical facilities to the rural poor.

Picking up from the minister's proposal, the OC top brass is understood to have decided to go further than just organising medical camps and instead providing for doctors and ambulances at its rural outlets and also at Kisan Sewa Kendras.

The corporation has decided to begin with Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh as a pilot project and depending on its success expand to various other states in a phased manner. At the IOC outlet and the Kisan Sewa Kendras basic generic drugs will be available along with the services of a doctor and an ambulance to take more serious patients to the closest hospital from the IOC outlet.

There are around 25,000 petrol pumps in the country and close to 15,000 are run by IOC alone. Of these, a very small percentage is located in rural areas aside from 3,500 Kisan Sewa Kendras which function in the rural areas.