Today, 11 February, is European Emergency Number 112 Day.
As the State Police recalls, the service was established in 2009 with the adoption of a joint declaration by the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, and is currently operational in 13 Italian regions (including Sardinia), with 18 Single Response Centers (Cur) which guarantee service coverage to over 38 million inhabitants, equal to approximately 65% of the national population.
Every citizen, by dialing 112, can request the type of assistance they need (health, police, fire brigade and sea rescue). The call is collected by the Single Response Center which, having carried out the appropriate checks, forwards it with the location data of the caller and the type of assistance, to the competent operations room for immediate intervention.
The user can therefore reach all emergency services free of charge through a single number with the guarantee of multilingual access. All calls are localized and the single response centers also carry out a filtering action on improper (non-emergency) phone calls equal - in 2023 - to almost 45% of the total requests.
In Italy, each emergency call normally receives a response in just over 7 seconds, with overall call management times in line with the technical specifications. In the event that contact with the control unit does not occur for any reason, the user is immediately called back.
During 2023, the Single Response Centers operating in the area handled over 21 million phone calls, ensuring the reception of emergency calls generated directly by cars in the event of a car accident thanks to the e-Call system. In 2023, the reports managed in this way were over 120,000, with the forwarding of 7084 calls for interventions recognized by the CUR as actually necessary.
Since 2021, the "112Sordi" service has also been active, provided throughout the national territory with a completely free system that allows the use of a real-time text chat, the sharing of the geographical position, the possibility of receiving useful images while waiting for help. and to answer extremely simple and quick interactive questions. Last year 482 deaf people were helped with this special system dedicated to them.
(Unioneonline/ss)
