MEDICAL FIRST RESPONSE

If you're ever down under it's 000. Easy to remember and available as you describe above on pay phones and mobiles with bars on making calls. This accesses ambulance, fire brigade and police. You just say which service you need.

In European Union countries (and some that aren't mmebers, like Switzerland), from both landlines and cell phones, it's 112. Anywhere in the world, on a GSM phone (one that uses a SIM card), it's 112. However, it's best to keep credit on the SIM card, since some spots in the world won't allow emergency calls from a phone without a SIM or without credit.

In the UK it's also 999

I'm pretty sure, at least in Western Europe, that law requires that any mobile phone, paid up or not, be able to call 999/112. Same for payphones, though of course, a landline has to be activated to make any calls.

Kate

In the US it 911, this gets you fire, ambulance, police. Any cell phone can access the system, pay phones too.

I thought the new emergency response number in the UK was
0118 999 881 999 119 725 3

Chris...I hope not! I'd be dead before I could punch in all those digits! ;) Hopefully Kate weighs in again, but I'm pretty sure 112 is the emergency number in the UK, with the old 999 system still operating in parallel. BTW, did you know the first emergency phone service in N. America was a 999 system too?

That was a joke, that's why it's funny because it's so long. There's a show in the UK called 'The IT Crowd' . . . that's what it's from. Britons and maybe some Aussies might know about it. Didn't mean to cause any confusion.

Here in Canada, we also have health service you can call toll free and speak to a Registered Nurse or Pharmacist.

It's called "Tele-Health" and is available 24 hours a day. It's free and confidential. One aim of it was to help eliminate people clogging up emergency rooms when they probably could've waited to see their own doctor the next day.

It's paid for by Canadian tax dollars, but anyone can access it from anywhere in Canada.

Is there anything like this elsewhere in the world?

My health insurance offers the same service.