Punjab Emergency Service

The limited capacity to deal with emergencies and disasters was putting the lives and properties of the citizens at risk. This was evident from the fact that there were over 95% chances that in case of emergency; the victim will not get an ambulance for transportation, let alone timely emergency care by trained professionals. Therefore, it was quite clear that emergency management has been long neglected in Pakistan and there are no trained emergency paramedics even in the emergency departments of teaching hospitals. Moreover, prehospital emergency ambulance, rescue and trained fire services or a disaster response force were virtually non-existent which was blatantly exposed during October, 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. A few ambulances (provided by NGOs) were available lacking essential equipment and trained staff. Thus, the citizens of Pakistan were denied even the basic right to timely emergency care in case of any emergency or a disaster.
Therefore, the Punjab Emergency Service (Rescue 1122) started in 2004 with a hypothesis that if you are not even prepared for an emergency do not expect a miracle in case of a Disaster. Rescue 1122 has now developed into the largest humanitarian service of Pakistan with strong infrastructure in all districts of Punjab and is also providing assistance & training to the staff of other provinces. Rescue 1122 has been able to gain trust of people by rescuing millions of victims of emergencies through its emergency ambulance, rescue & fire services while maintaining its average response time of 7 minutes and standards in all 36 districts & tehsil of Punjab.
As a result of the performance during emergencies and disasters including the devastating floods of 2010 the Provincial Disaster Management Authority has notified Punjab Emergency Service as the “Disaster Response Force” and the Home Department, Government of the Punjab, has also transferred the flood relief function along with material resources from Civil Defense to the Punjab Emergency Service on 28th May, 2011. Rescue 1122 is also strengthening its capacity for disaster preparedness and response in collaboration with the National & Provincial Disaster Management Authorities.
After establishing the core infrastructure comprising of essential emergency services personnel, the ultimate vision of Rescue 1122 is prevention of emergencies through proactive community participation in saving lives and changing minds of the society so that we can establish disaster resilient & safer communities. In this regard, the community teams have already been constituted in every district and several initiatives are in progress to establish safer communities in Pakistan. In district Sialkot Services of Rescue 1122 were started on 21st April 2008 and Rescue Warden Service / Rescue Mohafiz (CERTs) was started in Sialkot in 2009.