Ambulance and emergency-response subscriptions for the districts

A first step

Find out from the nearest hospital's emergency desk how long help takes to reach the villages in your district at night. Then ask 20 households with an elderly parent who they would call, and offer a yearly membership with one number to ring and a vehicle on standby, collecting signed pledges at a stated price. Enough pledges to cover a driver and a vehicle for a year is your answer.

Who pays first

A child abroad whose parent lives in a village far from the hospital, who would pay a yearly fee for one number that always answers.

What leaves today

Families now depend on a neighbour's car; a subscription turns money from Sri Lankans abroad into a funded local service, paid local drivers and a response record.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. EightWhat It Costs to Go First
  Remittances and what it costs the first one to go
• Ch. SixteenThe Bridge
  The institutions already in existence that could carry value back

More from cluster 17

• 341Home-care agencies with trained, vetted carers, booked and paid from abroad
• 342Assisted-living homes for the parents of Sri Lankans abroad, with the standard published and inspected
• 343A daily check-in service: a nurse's visit, a photograph, a message to the child abroad
• 344Medical escort services: a nurse takes the parent to the appointment and reports back
• 345Pharmacy delivery with the prescription managed and the refills tracked
• 346Dementia day-care centres, which hardly exist yet and are needed everywhere

All 20 ideas in this cluster