New Year's Eve busiest since Millennium says ambulance service

8:43am Wednesday 2nd January 2008

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This New Year's Eve was the busiest for London's ambulance service since the Millennium.

Between midnight and 4am the service dealt with 1,825 calls, a 16 per cent increase on the previous year.

“The majority of calls we have responded to have been alcohol-related, which we always anticipate to be the case on what is our busiest night of the year."

Jason Killens

At the busiest point in the evening staff were taking more than 500 emergency calls an hour - more than four times what they would expect to deal with on a normal night.

There were a high number of calls concerning alcohol-related incidents. The London Ambulance Service operated an alternative response vehicle to deal with these calls to free up regular ambulances to deal wit more life threatening incidents.

Assistant director of operations Jason Killens said: "The majority of calls we have responded to have been alcohol-related, which we always anticipate to be the case on what is our busiest night of the year.

"We have used extra resources, such as an alternative response vehicle and staff on foot with medical equipment, and have worked with St John Ambulance to provide 13 temporary treatment centres. This helped us to manage the increase in demand and ensured people out celebrating in the centre of London received the most appropriate medical care as quickly as possible.

"I'd like to thank our frontline staff who have worked extremely hard to care for patients on a night of exceptionally high demand, and those in our Emergency Operations Centre who have worked tirelessly dealing with a huge number of calls."