A Free Ambulance When Chennai Needed It Most: KUT's COVID-19 Service
4 min read
When private operators asked ₹5,000 for a single trip, our vehicles kept moving — and asked for nothing.
Karunai Ullangal Trust
Karunai Ullangal Trust free ambulance and volunteers in protective gear during the COVID-19 pandemic
The phone that never stopped
During the second wave the calls did not stop. Families needed to move a patient from one hospital to another, or to a scan centre and back, at hours when nothing was available. Private operators were asking ₹5,000 and more for a single trip; many callers simply did not have it.
Our emergency vehicles ran free, day and night, for anyone who asked.
Dignity for the unclaimed
The harder work came after. Bodies waited in hospitals because relatives were infected, distant, or unwilling — and many had no relatives at all. Our team transported them and performed the final rites themselves, following each person's customs as closely as circumstances allowed.
There was no register that separated the claimed from the unclaimed. Anyone without family was treated as our own.
What the period added up to
Across the pandemic: 200+ patients given free ambulance service, 700+ dignified final rites performed, and provisions delivered to more than 2,500 families. Shelter homes were sanitised and given awareness support.
The vehicles that carried Chennai through those months still run today — free, as they always were.
Every rescue is funded by someone like you
A meal, a medical check-up, a ride home — each one has a cost, and none of it is charged to the person being rescued. Donations are eligible for tax exemption under Section 80G.