Pandemic helpline and website

the NHS has today launched it's Pandemic helpline and website, supposedly to help ease the pressure on GP's etc from Swine Flu.

But, having seen or heard NO advertising for it other than a brief mention on a radio news bulletin, how do you contact it? And, even better, is that NONE of the people on the end of the phone, or online, are doctor's - or any medical professional. They are just asking a pre-set list of questions to help and maybe issue a voucher for the anti viral drugs.

Would you trust it? And how much has it cost to set up? Couldn't this money have been given to GP surgery's to employee extra nurse's or pay them overtime?

Shouldn't a paramedic have been more caring?

An ambulance driver / paramedic took a critically ill patient, picked up after a 999 call with a suspected stroke, to the depot rather than the hospital because his shift had ended.

To make matter;s worse, he then left his colleague, a technician, with the patient in the back of the ambulance and went and clocked off as his shift finished 15 minutes previously. He didn't even tell the replacement driver that there was a patient in the ambulance!

The patient later died in hospital of a suspected heart attack!

Surely if you chose a career path like that, as a paramedic trained to save lives, you can't be a clock watcher? How could anyone just walk away like that knowing full well what the conseqences may have been?

Both the driver / paramedic who clocked off and the poor technician left fighting to save the patient ahve been suspended pending an investigation.