False alarms, hoax calls plague ambulance service

Guwahati: Even as the ‘102’ National Ambulance Service (NAS) completes a year in the state, it continues to be plagued by the problem of hoax calls.
In its one year of existence, more than 85% of the calls received by it have been false alarms. The service, which was launched in Assam in September 2013, receives around 5,000 calls daily.
“This is our only worry right now. If we have to attend to such a huge number of hoax calls, our performance really suffers.People who really need our help are not getting through to us. According to our records, 85.35% of the calls made to us are false. We appeal to people to refrain from making unnecessary calls,” chief operating officer of 102 ambulance service Santanu Sharma told TOI.
Of the 18,76,682 calls received by 102 NAS in a year, more than 16 lakh were ineffective, comprising no-response calls, hoax calls and calls by children. According to Sharma, such calls waste valuable time and energy and hamper efficient service delivery.
Among the ineffective calls, 59.59% attended calls did not receive any response, while 10.80% calls were missed calls. Besides, 4.07% calls were prank calls and 0.16% callers used abusive words.
The 102 National Ambulance Service was launched in the presence of the then Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, chief minister Tarun Gogoi and the then state health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma in September 2013. It is the first of its kind in the country to offer inter-facility transfer, which allows a patient to be referred to a higher hospital from a lower one.
In case of emergency, 102 NAS also helps patients return home from the hospital. It has attended to 84,528 cases so far. At present, it has 279 vehicles and covers all the 27 districts of the state.