Increased Demand For Ambulances In Guernsey

Friday, 9 February 2024 12:40

St John Ambulance attended almost 7,000 emergency cases in 2023.

More people required the assistance of Guernsey's Ambulance & Rescue services last year, but that number is starting to plateau.

In 2023, ambulance call-outs were up by only 3% on the previous 12 months, compared to much larger increases in past years.

St John's Head of Operations Dean de la Mare says this is not a concern, as measures have been taken to deal with the rise in demand.

"The increases have shown that we have plateaued in our number of calls over the last few years. If we go back five years, we have seen a 24% increase since 2018.

We have been increasing our staffing levels and putting things in place to deal with the level of demand that we are now seeing.

On an average day, we deal with about 18 or 19 cases. Last year, our highest day of demand was 36 cases on a day in May.

Our lowest demand was only four jobs in a 24 hour period and that was on the day of Storm Ciaran. I think was that was due to all the messages going out telling people to stay safe and stay inside."

Demand differs day-to-day, but islanders are being reassured that contingency plans are in place for exceptional circumstances.

6% of the cases in 2023 were immediately life-threatening calls.

Of the 6,857 emergency responses last year, the busiest month was December where the service attended 637 call-outs.