SAHIWAL: The Rescue 1122 service here received 79 per cent bogus and irrelevant calls during 2018 and only 7pc of the calls received in the year were genuine emergency cases.

“The bogus and irrelevant phone call phenomenon has over-burdened our human resource and sometimes leads to a debacle because many genuine calls are missed and not responded to in time,” said Dr Khalid Abdullah, district emergency officer (DEO), while talking to Dawn in his office on Wednesday.

While agreeing to a proposal, the DEO said a national-level proactive advocacy campaign was needed to educate people against making prank calls to the emergency service.

Rescue 1122 Sahiwal received 674,165 calls in 2018 out of which 537,440 were irrelevant and bogus and only 41,628 genuine. The rescue service also added motorcycles to its fleet in December 2017.

The data shows motorcycle rescuers attended to 13,608 emergencies out of which 2,806 patients were shifted to hospitals and 11,701 provided treatment on the spot.

Dr Abdullah said the Rescue 1122 also held awareness sessions for the people, private sector departments and educational institutions and provided them basic first-aid training as well as created awareness about avoiding prank calls. He said the bogus calls engaged their staff who could not attend to genuine cases.

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2019