The Kathmandu Metropolitan City has purchased nearly three dozen new ambulances with its budget, which will be distributed to local units of remote places across the country.

Officials say that five out of the 35 ambulances have already arrived, and the supplier has committed to delivering the remaining vehicles within a month.

“We will hand over the ambulances to local units once we receive all the vehicles,” said Deepak Kumar KC, chief of the health department of the metropolis. “We spent Rs2 million on each vehicle after customs exemption and have also purchased ‘category B’ accessories spending additional amounts.”

Officials say that the municipal council meeting had approved the decision to provide ambulances to local units in remote areas. KC said that the city office had tried to provide ambulances to local units earlier, too, but the tender to purchase vehicles was cancelled several times for various reasons.

“Mahindra Bolero SUVs have been purchased to be used as ambulances,” said KC, adding that the respective local units will operate the ambulances.

Meanwhile, the City’s health department said that work had started to set up an advanced laboratory at a building provided by Shanti Vidya Griha at Lainchaur. Officials say samples that cannot be tested in laboratories of urban health promotion centres will be tested in the Lainchaur lab.

The metropolis has already started free ultrasound services from urban health promotion centres of Wards 6, 8, 9, 10,12, 26 and 30.

The health department has also started free cervical cancer screening from its urban health promotion centre at Ramghat in the Pashupati area. For that, the city office hired two gynaecologists, purchased testing kits, and started screening patients, with plans to expand the service to other urban health centres.