The state government is planning to introduce air ambulance to provide timely medical assistance to accident victims.

The facility would be first introduced in districts like Patna, Muzaffarpur and Bhagalpur, health minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey said in Patna on Thursday.

Insisting that the health department would implement many of the practices observed on his visit to hospitals and medical colleges in the UK, Choubey remained non-committal about when the air ambulance facility would be launched. He had been on a visit to the UK on the invitation of Bihar Jharkhand Doctors’ Association (UK).

“In the UK, roads are monitored by satellites and information on any traffic accident reaches the trauma centres instantly. The injured are airlifted to the nearest facility within eight to nine minutes, which saves many lives. We want to introduce the same system here based on our resources so that emergency patients could be immediately brought to centres like Patna Medical College and Hospital,” he said, a day after returning from the UK.

Choubey said the government would sign a memorandum of understanding with doctors from the UK to strengthen the primary healthcare.