60 Parachute Field Hospital Selected For ‘Subhash Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan Puraskar-2024’

By Itishree Sethy On Jan 23, 2024

New Delhi: 60 Parachute Field Hospital of Uttar Pradesh has been selected for the Subhash Chandra Bose Aapda Prabandhan Puraskar-2024 in the Institutional category for its excellent work in Disaster Management.

The annual award has been instituted to recognise and honour the invaluable contribution and selfless service rendered by individuals and organisations in India in the field of disaster management.

The award is announced every year on January 23, the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, and carries a cash prize of Rs 51 lakh and a certificate in case of an institution and Rs 5 lakh and a certificate in case of an individual, the statement said.

For the award, online nominations were solicited from July 1, 2023, onwards. In response to the award scheme, 245 valid nominations were received from institutions and individuals.

The 60 Parachute Field Hospital was established in 1942. It is the sole airborne medical establishment of the Indian Armed Forces, recognised for its exceptional service in various global crises.

The primary mission includes Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations during natural calamities, both nationally and internationally, in times of peace and war.

It provided medical assistance during the Uttarakhand floods (2013), the Nepal earthquake under the operation name ‘Maitri’ (2015), and the Indonesian Tsunami as part of Operation Samudra Maitri (2018).

Recently, in response to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria in February 2023, the unit rapidly assembled a 99-member team and established India’s pioneering level-2 medical facility in Turkey, overcoming resource constraints and language barriers to set up a 30-bed hospital in Hatay province’s school building under ‘Operation Dost’.