Naomi’s death: firefighters call for a ‘reform of the emergency call system’

The news of the failure to handle an emergency call in Strasbourg, followed by the death of 22-year-old Naomi Musenga, has caused considerable distress and raised many questions. Whilst expressing its sympathy and solidarity with the victim’s family, and without waiting for the outcome of any legal proceedings, the FNSPF wishes to outline the current procedures for handling emergency calls and to reiterate the proposals it has been putting forward for several months to improve the safety of the system and minimise the risk of errors. In this case, it has emerged that the victim dialled 17 (police), who transferred the call to 18 (fire service), who then passed the call on to 15. This sequence of events is, unfortunately, all too common and highlights the lack of clarity surrounding the existing emergency numbers, which result in calls being routed to nearly 450 different call centres: 15: Ambulance service / 17: Police or Gendarmerie / 18: Fire service, but also 115: Social Emergency Service, 119: child abuse, 196: maritime emergencies, 191: aviation emergencies, (…) not to mention the ‘single’ European number: 112. In total, 13 numbers are currently listed as emergency numbers. For Eric Faure, president of the FNSPF, “we cannot simply attribute the responsibility for this tragedy to individual error. It is our duty to examine how our systems operate”. The FNSPF wishes to reiterate its proposal for joint ‘112’ platforms bringing together, in particular, the fire service and the Samu. This model has, moreover, proven its worth extensively abroad: in the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, major German cities, Madrid, the United States, Canada… and continues to expand. Such an organisation does not lead to a decline in medical coordination but rather ensures its long-term sustainability and guarantees that a doctor will be available when needed. As the President of the Republic called for in his speech on 6 October 2017, the public authorities must thoroughly rethink the coordination of emergency response and urgent medical assistance services, making the most of digital transformation to strengthen cooperation between public services.