ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada (CMC)  – Grenada's acting Medical Director Dr Tyhiesia Donald on Wednesday called for an end to the number of prank calls being made to the Accident and Emergency Department of the island's General Hospital, saying they are affecting the level of health care to be provided to citizens.

“I can confirm that we have had these pranks calls and it's actually very sad that this is happening in the midst of the pandemic with the number of cases that we have and persons seeking medical care,” Donald said, pointing out that the operation at the hospital is already affected because of the number of coronavirus diagnoses among medical staff including doctors.

Grenada began its second wave of an upsurge in COVID-19 active cases from late December last year and Donald shared that as of January 19, 16 doctors, 32 nurses, and other auxiliary staff within the public health care system have been infected with COVID-19.

Pleading with the public to put an end to making such calls, Donald said when an ambulance is deployed, people's lives are at stake because they are being deprived of urgent care.

“So, I will really like to ask the public to work with us, please work with us. If you do a prank call and there is someone, a family member who actually needs to have that ambulance call, what could have happened is that the resources would have been deployed to an area where it is not needed,” she stressed. “So it means that what will happen is that someone who needs urgent care will be deprived of that care because of your prank call,” Dr Donald told reporters at the weekly post-cabinet news conference on Wednesday.

“We have instances where an ambulance goes to a household and the persons there, they don't have any idea why it is there and then you have the other instances where ambulance go out and no one is there. We have two scenarios, no one is there, and the other scenario is the person within the household have no idea why the ambulance is there,” she added.

“They should really stop that practice because it's affecting our system.”

Under Grenada's Electronic Crimes Act, it's a criminal offence to make prank calls to law enforcement and emergency services to give false and misleading information.

The Act makes provision for a person convicted on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding EC$5,000 or to a term of imprisonment not exceeding six months or to both.