Air Ambulance

COVID-19 & THE AIR AMBULANCE BOOM

If there was a moment when the burgeoning air ambulance market came into its own, it was following the arrival of Covid-19.

Even before the pandemic, demand for air ambulances was expected to grow – but the introduction of travel restrictions between countries changed the game overnight.

For insight into how this happened, take the story of Abdul Rashid Sahari (64) and his wife Safiah (56).

For 20 years, Sahari had been working in Jakarta in Indonesia as a quality control officer for a power plant, according to The Straits Times.

But the couple wanted to celebrate their 33rd wedding anniversary in their home country, Singapore, along with their daughter and three grandchildren. A fancy dinner was planned, travel arrangements were made, and the family was gleefully anticipating the reunion.

Then Rashid and Safiah both caught Covid. While Safiah’s condition soon stabilised, Rashid’s went downhill fast, and he was eventually admitted to a private hospital in Jakarta on December 3rd. “What started with him still fighting through and smiling for the family in video calls became video calls of him struggling to breathe,” said his son-in-law Haikel Fahim.

The family realised they had to get him back home “to give him a better fighting chance”. But with commercial air travel impossible for the seriously ill Rashid, the family realised an emergency air evacuation was the only option.

THE FAMILY REALISED THEY HAD TO GET HIM BACK HOME “TO GIVE HIM A BETTER FIGHTING CHANCE”. BUT WITH COMMERCIAL AIR TRAVEL IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE SERIOUSLY ILL RASHID, THE FAMILY REALISED AN EMERGENCY AIR EVACUATION WAS THE ONLY OPTION.

It wouldn’t be cheap though. “The family has used Rashid’s retirement savings and needed further help,” said Fahim.

So, they set up a blog, detailing Rashid’s illness and what had happened, to ask for help raising the $64 000 needed for an air ambulance, his hospitalisation, and rehabilitation.

Unexpectedly, donors flooded the website, and thousands came in, shooting past the original $64 000 goal. It meant Rashid could be airlifted back to Singapore on a private jet retrofitted with medical equipment.

From there, he was put into the ICU and intubated. The photographs on Fahim’s blog trace Rashid’s progress, from an initially dispiriting sight, strapped up in an ICU, to far more encouraging ones where it now looked as though the story might end well after all.

By mid-December, Rashid had begun to speak again. As Fahim said, although “he’s still in ICU, with a nasogastric tube for feeding, he’s looking a lot better”.

The point is that without an air ambulance, Rashid would have remained stuck in Jakarta, away from his family, and in a far more vulnerable position, one possibly leading to a much more tragic ending.

In recent months, you can read many variations of this story. With lockdowns and quarantine now the order of the day across the globe, the air ambulance market is booming.

Recent research by Coherent Market Insights put the size of the global air ambulance market at $4.5-billion by 2019. But more relevant is that it expects that market to grow by about 9.3% per year, between 2019 and 2027.

This growth is due, in part, to the fact that medical insurance providers are now increasingly willing to cover at least part of air ambulance expenses.

In South Africa, there are only 14 air ambulance operators approved by the Civil Aviation Authority.

One of those, Owenair, is owned by United Aviation Group and is the exclusive Air Ambulance service provider to International SOS and Air Rescue Africa for, but not limited to, the Sub-Saharan region.

UNEXPECTED COMPLICATIONS OF COVID-19

International SOS has been run off its feet during the pandemic. At this point, it has “assisted over 55 000 Covid-19 related cases, performed over 750 air ambulance movements for Covid-19 and other patients, and operated 32 charters with over 2 000 passengers from 146 countries”.

Evidently, the company knows what it’s doing. In its 35year history, it has handled sensitive evacuations from the remotest places, such as offshore oil rigs and small islands. Its record includes being called in to do evacuations during the SARS epidemic in 2003, the Sri Lankan Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, the Japanese nuclear fallout emergency in 2011, and the Ebola epidemic in 2014.

And yet, despite all this experience, Covid-19 was still a shock to the system.

Dr Rahul Kalia, medical director for International SOS in India, said the way Covid-19 has evolved in recent months was “very surprising and caught most of us off guard, individuals and organisations”.

One complication was that it wasn’t just Covid-19 patients who needed help. Often the travel restrictions implemented to curb the pandemic led to other problems, requiring evacuation.

For example, in the middle of the year, International SOS was asked to evacuate a 46-year-old Kenyan man working in Kandahar in Afghanistan, who’d had a pulmonary embolism. He’d initially been sent to a military clinic, but with so many travel restrictions in place, it had become tricky to get him to a regional hospital when his illness had worsened.

Still, Kalia said, if there’s been one positive outcome to emerge from Covid-19, it’s that technology will become a far

UNITED AVIATION GROUP, FOR EXAMPLE, SINCE ITS FIRST MEDEVAC IN 2016, HAS COMPLETED 461 FLIGHTS AND 3 486 FLIGHT HOURS AND IS NOW SO MUCH IN DEMAND THAT IT HAS AIR AMBULANCES BASED IN BOTH JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, AND ACCRA, THE CAPITAL OF GHANA.

more fundamental part of healthcare in future. Air ambulances, clearly, will be at the front of that queue, as demand soars.

United Aviation Group, for example, since its first medevac in 2016, has completed 461 flights and 3 486 flight hours and is now so much in demand that it has air ambulances based in both Johannesburg, South Africa, and Accra, the capital of Ghana.

ICU IN THE SKY

Those who’ve never been in an air ambulance – and that’s most of us – would want to know exactly how such an aircraft is kitted out.

Owenair’s Hawker business jet air ambulances, for one, are state-of-the-art. Besides portable ultrasound equipment, cardiac monitors with defibrillators and pacemakers, infusion pumps and syringe drivers, they even carry universal donor blood.

For an infectious disease like Covid-19, the aircraft also has an “isolation medical unit,” as well as adult, paediatric and neonatal intensive care ventilators.

Owenair can “dispatch an Air Ambulance Rescue flight worldwide, within 2-3 hours of activation, using a dedicated Flight Crew who are highly trained and experienced”.

After a year in which the importance of medical technology has been profoundly demonstrated — leading to the creation of the fastest vaccines ever developed — we really do need to ask why air ambulances have taken so long to catch on in the public imagination.

EACH OF OUR EXCLUSIVE OWENAIR OPERATED AIR AMBULANCE AIRCRAFT IS EQUIPPED WITH THE FOLLOWING:

• Portable Ultrasound • Powered Lifeport™ Stretchers with built-in long range oxygen supply • Adult, paediatric and neonatal intensive care ventilators • Cardiac Monitors – Defibrillators with pacemaker, 12 lead ECG, Spo2, CO2 • In-flight arterial blood gas analysis • Invasive and non-invasive blood pressure monitoring • Infusion pumps and syringe drivers • Suction units with backup • Standard, rescue/immobilisation equipment and vacuum mattresses • Patient Isolation Medical Unit – for transportable VHF, Covid-19, Avian flu or other infectious diseases • Thrombolytics and snake bite anti-venom • Universal donor blood when required

AIR AMBULANCE AIRCRAFT CONTACT DETAILS

For a highly competitive and reliable service, using a dedicated fleet of expertly equipped Air Ambulance aircraft, contact International SOS (Operated by Owenair). For an immediate response, call +27 11 541 1300.