An Indian private-public partnership, which has saved 115 000 lives in two years by providing an emergency services contact centre for India's Andra Pradesh province, is keen to replicate the experience in SA, if asked.
The non-profit Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) has hosted South African officials and had talks with them on the subject, but to date to no avail. Meanwhile, other countries, including Egypt, are keen to replicate the success.
EMRI provides an ambulance, fire fighter and police dispatch service to 80 million people, over 2.7 million square kilometres.
"Here we are talking about saving lives," says EMRI marketing senior partner Murali Mohan. "Everything we do must be benchmarked against the best in the world."
The service is being rolled-out in two more provinces and will go national in 2009, giving every Indian easy, reliable quick and free access to the emergency services via a single number.
SA still lacks a single national number that can do the same.
Modern technology
Satyam Computer Services is EMRI's technology partner. Ramalinga Raju, the company's founder and chairman, says EMRI, which he helped establish, is an example of what can be done between business and government to deliver better service to citizens.
""We've built specialist skills in delivering emergency services in a very effective manner," Raju says. "Some of the practices we have adopted, including Six Sigma, are state-of-the-art. In many ways, we are ahead of even developed countries where these centres have been in use for decades. There is lots of room for modern technology in spaces usually viewed social in nature."
Mohan says the contact centre works in three shifts with a doctor assigned to each to provide advice to the emergency medical technicians in the ambulances via a Web cam.
The centre also uses a client relations management system to follow up all emergency calls received within 48 hours to determine outcomes. This data is analysed and the business intelligence gathered is fed back into the training system or used to determine trends.
On the map
Emergency vehicles are dispatched using geospatial information system e-maps and vehicles are tracked using the global positioning system. Mohan says 60% of calls come from mobile phones, often in rural areas. EMRI does not yet have access to cellphone metadata, such as caller location, for privacy reasons, but hopes to have access soon as this will help it reach victims faster.
Mohan says 95% of calls are answered within two rings, with 71% being for medical attention, 28% for police and 1% for fire. The average time to hospital from call is 36 minutes. Crank calls and calls for non-emergency advice make up the bulk of calls. Of 5.5 million calls logged and recorded since April 2005, just 300 000 were for emergencies.
"We've synergised a private entity's speed and efficiency with government's systems and resources to improve deliverables significantly."
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