On the occasion of European Emergency Call Day this Sunday, the Bavarian Red Cross (BRK) pointed out the increasing number of improper emergency calls. “More and more people are turning to the emergency number 112 even though there is no actual emergency,” explained BRK state manager Elke Frank in a statement on Friday. This is the result of the evaluation of the number of cases from 2023.
According to this, 1.353 million people dialed 112 or 19222 last year, and in 2022 there were 1.307 million callers. However, the number of rescue missions triggered fell from 675,000 (2022) to 648,000 (2023).
The emergency call is intended for acute life-threatening problems such as heart attacks, strokes or broken legs, as well as for events such as fires or accidents, explained Frank. Anyone who suffers from chronic or classic family doctor complaints such as cough, runny nose or hoarseness at the weekend or on public holidays should contact the medical on-call service on 116 117. Otherwise, the dispatchers in the rescue control center would have to “mobilize help even though it is not necessary,” explained the BRK managing director.
The reason for this is that in some cases there is a lack of legal certainty to reject an emergency call. The Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) described the teams in the control centers as “invisible heroes in the background”. The European Emergency Call Day is an opportunity to recognize their outstanding work, said the minister in a statement on Friday.
In Bavaria, around 1,150 dispatchers are deployed at a total of 270 operational control centers. “They act quickly, professionally and make a significant contribution to security in Bavaria,” explained Herrmann. The Free State of Bavaria invests around 22 million euros annually in the technical equipment of the 25 integrated control centers in the Free State.