Faxing helps deaf people access health services in Spain

doi:10.1136/bmj.326.7393.824/a

BMJ 2003;326:824 ( 12 April )

Letters

Faxing helps deaf people access health services in Spain

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Jones and Gill described the communication problems experienced by ethnic minority groups in their attempts to gainaccess to NHS healthcare services.¹ Several readers subsequentlyreported that deaf people encountered comparable obstacles andthat rapid connection to an interpreting service was no solution. ² ³ Evidently, users with hearing deficiencies face enormous barriersto communicating with any health agency that offers services throughtelephonecontact.

In Spain access to in situ emergency health care is provided by a fast dial telephone call (061 or 112). As the public companyresponsible for the 061 service in Andalusia, we designed a newsystem for deaf people to access emergency services. Taking advantageof the widespread use of fax machines by deaf people (over 70%of the deaf population in Andalusia possess a fax machine), wedeveloped and validated a medical questionnaire for users to keepat home. In an emergency the questionnaire is completed . . . [Full text of this article]