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Following is a written reply by the Secretary for Security, Mr Ambrose S K Lee, to a question raised by the Hon Lau Kong-wah in the Legislative Council today (May 21):
Question:
Regarding the emergency ambulance service (EAS) of the Fire Services Department (FSD), will the Government inform this Council:
(a) among the ambulances deployed to provide the above service, of the respective numbers of those which were damaged, replaced or procured in the past five years, broken down by the divisions under the Ambulance Command of FSD, as well as the numbers of emergency ambulance calls received by various divisions in the same period;
(b) of the number of cases (except special cases involving incidents in remote rural areas), in each of the past five years, in which ambulances failed to arrive at the scene of incident within 12 minutes of receiving emergency ambulance calls, the districts with relatively higher ratio of such cases and the reasons for that, and whether the situation was related to the insufficient number of ambulances;
(c) of the number of times ambulances were deployed to provide cross-district EAS in the past five years; and
(d) whether the authorities have, on the basis of the above figures, assessed if the existing EAS is adequate?
Reply:
Madam President,
(a) The numbers of ambulances damaged, replaced and additionally acquired in the past five years, broken down by the divisions under the Ambulance Command, are as follows:
No. of ambulances damaged
-------------------------
Year Hong Kowloon New New
Kong Division Territories Territories
Division East & West South
Division Division
---- -------- -------- --------- --------
2003 - - - -
2004 2 - 1 -
2005 1 - 1 -
2006 - 1 - -
2007 1 1 2 1
-----------------------------------------------------
Total: 11
No. of ambulances replaced
--------------------------
Year Hong Kowloon New New
Kong Division Territories Territories
Division East & West South
Division Division
---- -------- -------- ----------- -----------
2003 - - - -
2004 9 9 6 8
2005 2 - 6 4
2006 - - - -
2007 - - - -
-----------------------------------------------------
Total: 44
No. of ambulances additionally acquired
---------------------------------------
Year Hong Kowloon New New
Kong Division Territories Territories
Division East & West South
Division Division
---- -------- -------- --------- -----------
2003 - - - -
2004 1 3 - 3
2005 - 3 - 1
2006 - - - -
2007 - - - -
-----------------------------------------------------
Total: 11
Note: As the Fire Services Department (FSD) will flexibly deploy its ambulances to ambulance depots in different districts in view of the actual demand for ambulance service, the above figures only indicate the division of the ambulances' base depots when they were damaged, replaced or acquired, but not the division of their current base depots.
The numbers of emergency ambulance calls in the past five years, broken down by call addresses, are as follows:
No. of emergency ambulance calls
--------------------------------
Year Hong Kowloon New Total
Kong Territories
---- ---- ------- ----------- -----
2003 95,058 185,709 197,342 478,109
2004 103,590 209,715 223,054 536,359
2005 105,579 214,629 229,658 549,866
2006 103,248 211,780 224,875 539,903
2007 109,208 223,837 240,612 573,657
Note: FSD does not have the breakdown figures for the New Territories East & West Division and the New Territories South Division.
(b) Under the performance pledge of FSD, an ambulance will arrive at the street address of the scene within 12 minutes from the time of call for 92.5 per cent of all emergency ambulance calls. In the past five years, there were only a small number of emergency ambulance calls where the performance target of 12 minutes was not met. The detailed figures are as follows:
No. of emergency ambulance calls with response time exceeding 12 minutes
------------------------------------------------------------------
Year Hong Kowloon New Total
Kong Territories
---- ---- ------- ----------- -----
2003 4,634 12,547 14,393 31,574
(4.87%) (6.76%) (7.29%) (6.60%)
2004 6,057 19,494 21,155 46,706
(5.85%) (9.30%) (9.48%) (8.71%)
2005 7,605 20,507 28,893 57,005
(7.20%) (9.55%) (12.58%) (10.37%)
2006 5,648 12,613 19,861 38,122
(5.47%) (5.96%) (8.83%) (7.06%)
2007 6,646 13,763 19,988 40,397
(6.09%) (6.15%) (8.31%) (7.04%)
Note: Figures in brackets are the ratios to the total number of emergency ambulance calls in the relevant district.
Response time is affected by many factors, including travelling distance, traffic and weather conditions, etc. According to our records, generally speaking, the percentage of calls in the New Territories with response time exceeding 12 minutes is slightly higher than those of the other regions. FSD believes that this is mainly due to the comparatively larger geographical coverage of the New Territories region and hence the longer travelling time required.
(c) With a view to providing the timeliest emergency ambulance service to the injured persons or patients, FSD's existing mobilising system will automatically identify and assign the ambulance that can reach the scene within the shortest time to attend to the call, without being restricted by the boundaries or districts of fire stations or ambulance depots. As a result, ambulances are required to travel to various districts of the territory to meet operational needs. In fact, when assigning the suitable ambulance, the mobilising system will only consider the real-time location of the ambulance and the time it will take to arrive at the street address. To improve the coverage and the response time of emergency ambulance service, FSD will flexibly deploy the ambulance resources of different districts and, if necessary, move up ambulances to other fire stations and ambulance depots as stand-bys having regard to the actual needs. As the operational area of an ambulance is not based on the location of its base depot, figures regarding cross-district dispatch are not available.
(d) In 2007, the overall service of FSD has met its performance pledge. Ambulances can arrive at the scene within 12 minutes in slightly over 92.5 per cent of the emergency calls. Notwithstanding this, we will continue to make our best efforts to closely monitor the demand for emergency ambulance service. Apart from flexibly utilising our existing equipment and manpower, we will consider allocating additional resources where necessary.
Ends/Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Issued at HKT 18:50
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