Air ambulance- the only gateway to proper medical assistance in failing countries

Chartered flights are not just for business and pleasure; they also provide vital assistance in times of medical emergencies.
A chartered flight used for this purpose is an air ambulance. The air ambulance can be run by the government or funded by the public or can be an organization by itself. Whatever the case maybe it is for emergency medical assistance in situations where either a traditional ambulance cannot reach the scene easily or quickly enough, or the patient needs to be transported over a distance or terrain that cannot be covered on road. This makes air transportation the most practical transport. An air ambulance comes totally equipped with ventilators, medication, an ECG and monitoring unit, CPR equipment, and stretchers.

Air Ambulance in action

With its origins in the military, the concept of transporting the injured by aircraft was first tested in First World War. Emergency medical services were still primitive during those days, and it was during the African Colonial Wars of the 1920s that over 7,000 casualties were evacuated by the French. The first use of helicopters to evacuate combat casualties was by the German Luftwaffe, and the first dedicated use of helicopters by U.S. forces occurred during the Korean War of 1950-1953. Along with removing casualties from the battlefield these helicopters in the Korean War also expanded their services to moving critical patients to more advanced hospital ships once initial emergency treatment in field hospitals had occurred.

Knowledge and expertise of use of aircraft as ambulances continued to evolve along with the aircraft themselves, and by 1969, in Vietnam, the use of specially trained medical corpsmen and helicopters as ambulances became popular and effective. This conclusion inspired the first experiments with the use of civilian paramedics in the world. The US military has recently employed UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters to provide air ambulance service during the Iraq War to both civilians and military personnel. The use of military aircraft as battlefield ambulances continues to grow and develop today in a variety of countries, as does the use of fixed-wing aircraft for long-distance travel, including repatriation of the wounded. The next step in this development may be shown by a current NATO working group which is investigating the possible future use of Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for casualty evacuation.

Air ambulance’s pride in making use of the services of qualified and experienced to carry out air evacuation operations. Much care is taken to see that the selection procedure is done to address the requirement of the patients. All faculties are catered to and hence doctors are available for the intensive care and emergency, anesthetics, pediatrics, cardiology, neurology along with registered and experienced nursing services. These professionals are capable of carrying out all lifesaving emergency medical procedures and international in-flight repatriation. Most of the doctors have their visa status eligible to transport patients in most of the countries of the world, including Asian, European, American, Australian countries.

Air ambulance services run by private organizations offer exclusive medical security services for their prominent guests and VIPs traveling across the globe. This is in keeping the poor medical infrastructure while traveling in such countries. This service is essential from the view of fatigue, the stress associated with travel, jet lag, business stress, an individual medical problem both acute and chronic.

Air ambulances were useful in remote areas, but their usefulness in the developed world was still uncertain. Following the end of the Second World War, the first civilian air ambulance in North America was established by the Saskatchewan government in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, which had both remote communities and great distances to consider in the provision of health care to its citizens. The Saskatchewan air ambulance service continues to be active as of 2009.