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Cologne (dpa / lnw) - The Malteser Hilfsdienst has received many emergency calls from lonely seniors in North Rhine-Westphalia since Christmas.
Around 4000 alarms have been counted since Christmas Eve, the organization announced on Monday in Cologne.
In around 2300 cases, however, no medical help in the narrower sense was required - but the Maltese phoned the senior citizens.
The numbers are a signal for the loneliness of many old people.
"A lot of alarms are triggered by social calls or false alarms, where it turns out in conversation with our employees that the seniors actually only want to talk to someone," reported Ruth Horn-Busch, Head of House Emergency at Malteser in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The seniors then "somehow" justified why they had pressed the red button.
This happens particularly often at Christmas and around the turn of the year.
Seniors can use the Maltese emergency number to set off an alarm if something has happened to them.
According to its own information, the service has more than 35,000 customers in NRW.