The long-awaited inquest into the death of Norman Palmer is over, and it would be wrong to comment specifically on the circumstances of his death until the ruling is in.

But two more general points of public safety have been made that are worthy of comment – and of action – by Government and the Bermuda Hospitals Board. Dr. Edward Schultz, the director of the hospital's emergency department and a highly respected physician, said last week that the hospital had been unhappy with the Island's 911 emergency dispatching service for some time.

While he said it would be inappropriate to go into details on this at the inquest itself, he allowed that the hospital had raised concerns about the service and made recommendations for it, which have been apparently ignored.

Dr. Schultz might well be right not to air these concerns at the inquest, but this is not good enough. If the Island's emergency medical professionals have been unhappy with 911 service, then these concerns need to be addressed and quickly.

The public deserves to know what the concerns are and what is being done about them. One can only hope that no one dies before any one of these concerns have been dealt with.

Secondly, the evidence concerning the difficulties the emergency medical technicians had finding Mr. Palmer's home is very worrying. No one expects ambulance drivers to know every single one of Bermuda's roads and lanes, but it is inexcusable that they cannot be guided to the right place. At the moment, taxi drivers are losing their vehicle licences and thus their ability to make a living because their GPS systems are not working.

And yet, while taxi drivers and dispatching services are required to have GPS systems in their vehicles because radios are apparently not good enough, ambulances, fire engines and the Police are not required to have the same, even though they are dealing with matters of life and death. Does this make any sense? As a matter of urgency, Government needs to put its money where its mouth is and make sure all emergency vehicles have GPS. It could be the difference between life and death.