Activity

Highlights

This chapter presents some key figures on the emergency medical assistance activity.[1]

112 and 1733 calls   

In 2023, 2,559,690 emergency 112 calls were taken by the operators who work in the 10 Belgian emergency centres.[2]

Number of 112 calls in 2023

The Brussels emergency centre recorded most 112 calls, totalling 416,658 calls in 2023. This is followed by the Mons centre, with a total of 407,776 calls. It should be noted that the Mons emergency centre handles calls from the Provinces of Hainaut and Brabant Wallon. The Antwerp centre completes this top three with 319,466 calls.

The calls are predominantly redirected from the emergency centre that has territorial jurisdiction. However, since 2023, if a 112 emergency centre experiences a peak in activity, any calls that cannot be handled, are redirected to the 112 emergency centre in a neighbouring province. This so-called overflow system takes account of the linguistic role of the initial 112 emergency centre for which the call was intended. So, for example, a call from Flemish Brabant for the Leuven 112 emergency centre will not be redirected to the Mons 112 emergency centre in the Province of Hainaut, but instead to that of Ghent in the Province of East Flanders. The figures above refer to the calls actually taken by the various 112 emergency centres and not the calls that were initially destined for them.

Number of 1733 calls in 2023

In 2023, 327,030 calls to the 1733 number were taken by operators at the Belgian 112 emergency centres. This figure will increase in the coming years with the deployment of 1733 in the 112 emergency centres. The breakdown of the figures above results from the delayed activation of the 1733 number in some 112 emergency centres. The 1733 number has not yet been implemented in the 112 emergency centre of the Brussels-Capital Region.

Operators at the 112 emergency centre in Arlon in the Province of Luxembourg handled most 1733 calls, totalling 104,045 calls in 2023. Next come the 112 emergency centre in Mons in Hainaut (95,458 calls) and Bruges in West Flanders (79,113).

112 Interventions

  “746,354 primary interventions and 8,930 inter-hospital transfers in 2022”

In 2022, there were 755,284 interventions for which a call for emergency assistance was sent to 112[3]. 1% of these interventions are inter-hospital transfers.

For these interventions, an ambulance was deployed 687,899 times and a PIT team 69,814 times. The assistance of a MUG/SMUR team was requested 132,778 times and a helicopter was mobilised 1,634 times. It is possible that several resources were called to the same place for the same intervention.

Number of interventions by type of emergency medical assistance vehicle

The Flemish region had the highest number of primary interventions in 2022 with 408,324 interventions (55%). One third of interventions took place in the Walloon Region and 12% in the Brussels-Capital Region.

Number of primary interventions per region in 2022

However, if the number of interventions is considered according to the number of inhabitants of the region, it can be seen that the number of interventions per 100,000 inhabitants in the Flemish Region is significantly lower (5,744 interventions) than in the Walloon Region (7,496 interventions) and the Brussels-Capital Region (7,704 interventions).

If the interventions per district are broken down, it can be observed that the coastal regions, Tournai-Mouscron and Charleroi have the highest number of interventions per 100,000 inhabitants.

Over half the emergency medical assistance interventions related to patients aged 60 and over[4]. Regarding patient gender, approximately equal numbers of interventions were carried out for men and women. However, we note that the proportion of interventions per 100,000 inhabitants is higher in men than women across all age brackets.

^{[1]Figures on the number of contacts with the emergency services can be found in the Key Data for General Hospitals and in the report on emergency care.}

^{[2]Source: FPS Home Affairs and the Firefighting and Emergency Medical Assistance service of the Brussels-Capital Region.}

^{[3]Source: FPS Public Health and FPS Home Affairs (s.d.). SDS-records, AMBUREG, federal list of on-call rotations, data sets from 112 emergency centres. [Datasets]. Only non-occasional on-call rotation interventions were selected, excluding interventions abroad, planned and unplanned collocations and cancelled and test interventions.}

^{[4]The data on age and gender were extracted from the AMBUREG database and are based solely on interventions where an ambulance or a PIT team were called. For 98% of primary interventions, a match can be found between SDS and AMBUREG records. For 16.7% of AMBUREG records, age was not entered and for 16.4%, the gender was undetermined or unknown.}