Криминална хроника

A young family with a child is walking in the Market. Suddenly the child gets sick and the worried parents call the ambulance. They wait in vain, call the second and third times - all to no avail. The mother and father are in a panic. At the same time, an ambulance team went three times to the Market and searched in vain for the family with a sick child. Medics rightly assume that it is quite possible that they are again the victim of a false call.

In this story, which is not a film fiction, but a recent actual case, there is a huge paradox: the family with the sick child is at the Market in Velingrad, and the ambulance team is touring the Market in Pazardzhik!... A truly film-worthy plot or yet another proof that reality is more amazing than imagination.
How do you come to such paradoxes, which can sometimes cost a serious health problem or even the worst? In many ways, but in this particular case because of a phone.
As of mid-March, telephone 150 of the Emergency Medical Services Centers is no longer served by BTC. The Ministry of Health terminated the contract with BTC and concluded a new one with a mobile operator - first with M Tel and now with Globul. (Telephone 150 is free for the ringer, but the bill is paid from the state budget and therefore the contract is one of the appetizing bites to which there is always a great interest.)
For Velingrad and the municipality, however, a serious problem arises and it is not only technical. At the moment, if in Velingrad you dial the emergency number 150 from an analogue phone, you will connect without a problem. But if you dial 150 from a digital or mobile phone, you will contact an ambulance service in...Pazardzhik. And if you indicate only an address (street and number), without specifying that you are calling from Velingrad, you will find yourself in a situation like the one described above: you will wait for the medics in Velingrad, they will look for you at an address in Pazardzhik. I cannot imagine that at the beginning of the 21st century such technical disturbances are permissible, shares the chief of Emergency Medical Services in Velingrad Dr. Berov. According to him, there should be a legal provision to put order in the transfer of phone calls by the various telecommunications firms. Now, however, such legal measures are missing, and this also calls into question the introduction of a single 911 number in the United States.
From the technical problem with phone 150 in Velingrad sufferer could be anyone. Regardless that he has paid his health contributions and needs his due by law emergency medical care; that he has been injured in a traffic accident in an area where there is no mobile operator coverage; that he simply does not know about the existing problem and loses precious for health and life minutes while waiting for a solution for his pain between Pazardzhik and Velingrad. Emergency medical teams in both cities are also affected, for which this is another complication of their already difficult work.
Therefore, it is imperative that those who have a job and, first of all, the Ministry of Health find a way out. In the 21st century, it is indeed absurd for the health and lives of people from a whole region to be directly dependent on one phone number!
Elena Baeva