The baby was sick in a pretty good hospital, but possibly had some serious heart issue, and one of the best specialized cardiac hospital in the country is this hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. They have researched and developed even their own prosthetic heart.
The SAT hospital where the baby was taken to is a super specialized hospital made exclusively to research and treat the heart disease of kids. It's name itself is Pediatric Cardiology Medical College due to its specialty. They only take extreme referral cases like this one.
This hospital was founded before the independence by Maharaja of Travancore because his son, crown prince Sree Avittom Thirunal Rama Varma had an untreatable heart disease since his birth which led to his death at the age of six and the Maharaja wanted no one to suffer the same fate, hence such a super specialized hospital was created in his memory with the name Sree Avittom Thirunal(SAT) Hospital at a time period when even normal hospitals were rare in India.
This was the reason why the baby had to be transported there instead of any other hospital in the country. It was just the best option for the survival of the baby.
Air ambulance was ruled out because of the critical condition of the baby who had much better chances with a land-based ambulance.
Kerala has a good road network, but the roads are narrow due to the population density of the state. At many places, it is just one lane in both directions. Any traffic can delay by a lot. The normal journey in this route will take over 14 hours, yet this ambulance reached in less than half of that time - 6hours 40mins.
This was done due to the help of some volunteers across the state. A GPS device was attached to the ambulance and the location was transmitted to everyone. There were WhatsApp groups with people around the state.
When the ambulance is near any of the volunteer's location, they will remove the traffic of that location so that the ambulance can pass without any traffic. This was how they were able to travel at such speeds through so many towns. During the entire journey, they only had to slow down once at Alapuzha. Other than that, everything went smooth.
Along with volunteers, police also helped. Police vehicles escorted the ambulance during the entire journey and traffic police of each district made the arrangements to make the roads as clear as possible.
This story is not just about the ambulance driver. It is not just about the driver who drove the police escort vehicles in front of the ambulance. It is not about any single individual. Instead, it is about what we can achieve if a lot of people come together as one force. It is about togetherness. It is about unity. This story is awesome because so many people came together that day to make this happen.
Few such incidents have happened in the past too. A Malayalam movie named Traffic (2011) was made loosely based on a real incident similar to this. It is an excellent movie worth watching. Traffic movie was remade into Tamil as Chennaiyil Oru Naal, in Kannada as Crazy Star and is also remade in Hindi, with the same name Traffic (2016). The best one is, of course, the original movie. Watch the original movie if you can, as it is a unique movie which is shot from the perspective of a dozen people in a way no Indian movie has done before.