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Would you prank an Angel?
Emergency service receives over 30 000 prank calls.
A most disturbing report reached my ears this week.
I forget the exact figures, but the report stated that a private ambulance service’s national call centre received over 30 00 false calls during the last year.
Given that this is just one of a number of private ambulance services in the country, and if one considers the provincial ambulance services that probably have their share, the total number of prank or false calls to these noble services will surely boggle the mind.
I, for one, fail to see the joy or satisfaction anyone can derive from making such a false call.
Apart from the astronomical costs involved in wasted fuel, driving to nowhere to pick up a non-existing patient plus wasted man hours, there are far more serious implications that these acts of stupidity bring about.
The most obvious and very real possibility is that while chasing after a false call the paramedics and emergency workers may be needed at a scene of a serious accident where time is of the essence in saving lives.
It could even be that a drowned child’s life could have been saved if the ambulance crew had been able to attend a genuine emergency and not been sent on a wild goose chase.
What if this had been your child or mine, or our little sister or little brother? We just don’t know.
Another sad possibility is that in which the ambulance crews rush off after a false alarm, become involved in an accident and are killed in the process of attending to a sick joke.
I certainly would not like to have any of these scenarios on my conscience if I knew I was the one responsible for the prank call.
With modern technology it is possible to trace these heartless pranksters and lay criminal charges against them, but one wonders how many of the thousands of false callers are actually brought to book.
A fitting punishment for perpetrators of these sick jokes would be for them to accompany an ambulance crew, especially over payday weekends, to see first hand the carnage on the roads, the stabbings and assaults and even the birth of a baby.
I’m sure the pranksters will then have a different perspective, because these are real emergencies where these angels of mercy are really needed as quickly as possible.
What kind of person plays a joke on an angel anyway?
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