Ambulance Call-Outs Up By 11% Over Festive Period (Status: Press Release)

THE South Central Ambulance Trust dealt with more than 11,000 calls across the Christmas and New Year period, making it one of the busiest times ever for the organisation.
It also handled over 15,000 ?out of hours? calls ? people ringing for non-urgent advice and home visits once their GP Surgeries were closed.
As an example, at one point, the Out Of Hours staff for Oxfordshire took more than 500 calls in one hour alone ? that was on the 29th December.
Calls to the Out of Hours service represented the biggest increase in call volume, year on year.

Between the 24th December 2007 and 1st January 2008, calls taken by the Emergency Operations Centres were as follows:

Berkshire Division: 2,921 calls
Hampshire Division: 3,761
Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Division: 4,387

This represents an increase of approximately 11% on last year?s call volume. The types of incidents were extremely varied and although alcohol related problems did occur, there were also significant numbers of people with cardiac problems, breathing difficulties, falls and traffic accidents.