Kuchikomi Jan. 19, 2011 - 07:43PM JST ( 32 )

TOKYO —

In 2008, according to Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA) data, ambulances and rescue vehicles responded to calls on 5.12 million occasions—during which 4.68 million people received medical treatment. These figures represent an increase of 1.5 million cases over 10 years.

Despite this increase, the number of emergency vehicles in use nationwide only grew slightly, from 5,200 to 5,900, over the same decade.

What irks the agency, reports web news site J-cast (Jan 16), is not that rescue staff being obliged to work harder, but that the number of gratuitous calls for assistance have grown exponentially. Just over one-half of the callers suffered only minor injuries that did not require hospitalization.

Some of the more extreme cases included callers who told the dispatcher, “I’m smarting from severe sunburn”; “The hospital’s not answering the phone”; and “A mosquito bit me and I’m itchy all over.”

So annoyed is FDMA with the flood of trivial calls that it’s reportedly readying a “manual for ambulance users” to be posted on its web site from this coming March.

Some callers are authentic cranks. Sankei Shimbun (Oct 6, 2009) reported that between March and September 2009, a man in Wakayama made some 180 calls to the 119 emergency number, saying things like “It’s really bad. Send an ambulance!” and “I’ve cut my wrists.” Rescuers went to his home a total of 80 times, upon which he typically refused to open his door, snarling at them, “Kaere, aho” (go away, you fools).

The same article reported that another callers in Wakayama summoned an ambulance and en route to the hospital requested it to stop at a convenience store. Yet another telephoned to request that the medics drive away a snake from the caller’s kitchen.

Or this item, from the Niigata Nippo of March 31, 2010: “A woman complaining of a light injury to her foot summoned an ambulance to take her to a hospital. It was subsequently learned that she had visited the same hospital earlier that day as an outpatient. After waiting two hours without receiving treatment, she returned home and called 119 so that she would be taken to the emergency room.”

The situation has become so bad that Takamatsu City has launched a campaign to dissuade citizens from calling ambulances except in the case of genuine emergencies. The Shikoku Shimbun (Oct 27, 2009) reported that one person had summoned an ambulance, and told the crew upon arrival that “The hospital’s closed today, so would you just mind giving me a ride someplace?”

The Nishi Nihon Shimbun (Jan. 14, 2011) reported that last year rescue crews in Kitakyushu City were summoned a record 50,000 times, many for trivial reasons not requiring emergency treatment. In Tsu, Mie Prefecture, the local edition of the Mainichi Shimbun (Jan 12, 2011) reported that fully one-half of the calls to 119 last year were for minor cuts or toothaches. In other cases, the callers waited outside their homes with bags packed, in preparation for hospital admittance.

“More than malicious reasons, we suppose the increase in these kind of gratuitous rescue calls is because more people simply don’t know what ambulances are supposed to be for,” a source in the Ministry of General Affairs, which oversees the FDMA, tells J-cast. “Also, because of the growing number of nuclear families or single-person households, when people get injured or sick, they tend to blow things out of proportion, perhaps out of feelings of loneliness.”