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France: Infant dies due to telephone network failure

A 28-month-old infant died inside his home in the west France, during which the emergency services’ telephone lines were shut down, as announced today by the local authorities.

Vendé prefect Benoit Brocard said the child had died at the scene this morning, citing a “tragedy” as a result of a breakdown at the emergency services call center.

«There seem to be doubts about the consequences of this malfunction. It is legitimate and that is why we requested an administrative investigation“, Added Brocard.

According to the head of the local health service, Jean-Jacques Quaple, the emergency medical center received a call at 8.21 in the morning. His mother child «tried unsuccessfully for an hour to call telephone lines 18 and 15». He managed to catch a line when he used a ten-digit phone number.

At 8.22 the community fire service and emergency physicians responded. At the same time, a doctor was giving telephone instructions to the mother to provide first aid to her child, who suffered a heart attack.

The child did not succeed: he was pronounced dead at 9.25 am in his family home.

A fault in France’s telephone network on Wednesday afternoon left many people across the country unable to contact emergency services until midnight.

THEjudicial authorities will also launch an investigation into the death, also from opposition, a 63-year-old in the city of Van, in western France. Interior Minister Geral Darmanen, who was quick to return from a visit to Tunisia with Prime Minister Jean Castex, announced this morning that a patient suffering from cardiovascular problems had died after “failing to call for help” and spoke of “serious and unacceptable malfunction “.

Two similar incidents were recorded on the island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean “but I can not say if the time (until rescuers arrived) was too long,” the minister added.

Darmanen’s associates clarified that these two “events” resulted in the death of the patients.

«What is certain is that these people said that they tried to call many times and did not succeed immediately.“, Added Darmanen.

The general manager of the telecommunications company Orange, Stefan Richard, apologized “to all those who were affected in the last hours” for the problem, after he had been called to the Ministry of Interior earlier.

Speaking on the private television channel TF1, Richard completely ruled out the possibility that the company had fallen victim to a cyber attack. He explained that the most likely reason for the problem was that there was a “software malfunction in critical network equipment”. Orange had previously reported that there was a problem with a “router-type device”, the device that forwards telephone calls.

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