36% of calls received by National Ambulance are hoaxes

Abu Dhabi: Up to 36 per cent of phone calls received by the National Ambulance since May were false and resulted in deaths that could have been avoided if emergency resources were not wasted, an official said here on Tuesday.

The National Ambulance faces challenges in reaching people in remote areas in the Northern Emirates and hoax calls only make the situation worse, the official said.

“Upon gathering information from the caller, we rank the situation based on urgency and importance thereby giving it a level of priority. In one case, we received four different reports from what later on appeared to be the same person reporting four emergencies in different locations. We ended up dispatching six patrols and searching for the so called emergency locations. During that time, a man was run over in the Ta’awun area. His body was lifeless by the time we reached him 26 minutes later,” Ahmad Saleh Mohammad Al Hajeri, Deputy CEO at National Ambulance said.

Al Hajeri was speaking during a press briefing about plans for Northern Emirates, where it will have 50 ambulances and add 20 dispatch locations.

Sharjah is considered a ‘complex environment’ as the city is densely populated and is rapidly developing. “The international standard is to cross one kilometre in one minute, in the UAE that overall time is approximately 1.4 minutes/km and in Sharjah it’s 3.6,” he added.

The National Ambulance is able to access hospital systems which “means that no time is wasted just because a facility is fully occupied”.

Response time also decreased from 12 minutes and 10 seconds in September of this year to nine minutes and 21 seconds as of November and officials are working to reduce that number even further to about six minutes in 90 per cent of cases over the coming months.

“The leadership has asked that we bring that number down to four minutes by 2020,” Al Hajeri said.

People may often hesitate to help a person in need of emergency medical assistance for fear of making the victim’s situation even worse. However, National Ambulance officials urged members of the public to act based on their own expertise and not to attempt something that is too drastic.

“Performing first aid if one is qualified is encouraged and I have never heard of a case where a person was on trial for attempting to help somebody even if the injured person suffered from complications due to the inexpert medical aid,” he said.

Some challenges faced by paramedics attempting to access remote areas include the lack of connectivity and people’s unfamiliarity with the location when describing it.

Therefore, the National Ambulance has coordinated with telecommunication agencies in the country in order to provide better coverage for people in areas where they need it the most and have even advised callers to send them their location via WhatsApp.

Staying on the line

In some cases emergency operators were able to provide callers with step by step instructions on what to do in their situation.

“One man was able to help his wife give birth to their child and by the time the paramedics arrived all they had to do was cut the umbilical cord,” Al Hajeri said.