Ambulance facts

He is also wrong about the longrunning dispute over the fire service.

May I advise him that a stand-by ambulance crew does not have long to wait on stand-by for a call.

It is not unhealthy as crews can take rest breaks or use the toilet if needed.

The dispute within the fire service is over a plan to reduce the size of pensions and a longer working life. As regards his misinformed comments on the French combined ambulance service; in fact, this organisation responds to all major calls with a doctor and medical staff.

In the US, a 911 (emergency) call for an ambulance is directed to a joint fire/ambulance call room.

The medical despatcher sends two types of ambulances: a basic life support unit for minor calls and an advanced life support unit for major medical emergencies or trauma.

However, they also send a fire appliance for advanced life support calls which has a very highly trained paramedic aboard (incidentally, a paramedic with far higher in training than we have in the UK).

In many stations, both fire and ambulances are under the same roof.

But this is a private service. The majority of ambulances in the US are run under contract from the private sector with crews trained to a very high level.

But the medical insurance costs are huge, so always have insurance if travelling to the US.

What is needed in the UK is the US system with trained paramedics on all fire appliances as a lot of the stand-by response cars you see in lay-bys are not manned by paramedics but advanced trained staff who cannot give life-saving drugs.

The response cars are used to meet the times on attendance.

We have a second rate ambulance service, not due to the crews that man them but the ambulance service that wastes so much money on management costs and involving itself in areas that do not pay, thereby cutting down on frontline services.

John Merry, Darlington.