Air Ambulance Services – A Boon
The Ambulance in general is a vehicle that is used to transport patients to and from hospitals, accident centers and other scenes of emergencies. Air ambulance is a kind of ambulance that is an aircraft that is modified to have emergency medical services on board.
These emergency helpers can help reach remote locations
Ambulances via air have become very popular and are very useful in that they can reach even the most remote locations. To places where access is difficult by road, lifting patients via air is a very feasible option. Mountainous regions, regions that can be cut off by snow or storm, places that do not have facilities yet are all now accessible through this kind of transportation. These aircraft’s are also employed in cases to look for missing people or people who are wanted and being searched for.
They are equipped with good medical facilities and experts
These hospital wagons are well equipped to provide medical assistance at locations where the conventional method of providing ambulances via ground is very difficult. The operations that are performed via these kinds of facilities come under the aero medical category. Medications, stretchers, ECGs, ventilators, monitoring equipments, and other vital medical facilities are available on board for the injured or the sick to be treated. Patients who are evacuated through these aircraft are said to be treated under medical evacuation (MEDEVAC).
Some aircraft do not contain any medical facility. They simply lift the patients from the scene of trauma and fly them to the medical centre for treatment. They are simply staffed to carry the patients. This is called casualty evacuation. (CASEVAC).
The usage started in the military initially
The military was responsible for the use of ambulance facilities via air. They started treating injured soldiers while shifting them from the battlefield. The practice was started and experimented right from the times of the First World War.
In civilian cases the use is purely incidental. Remote places and places where the population is very sparse, where roads tend to be inaccessible, countries like the Scandinavian, Australia, northern Canada and other such places like Norway where transportation is via water is where these kinds of ambulances started to be used.
The operation and maintenance are run by many outfits
The ambulances that ply through the air can be donated to non Government organizations through charitable fund raising. Some business or organization can locally provide a helicopter in good will or to improve public relations. In some cases, they may assist for a fee since the costs of operation of these kind of vehicles is very high compared to the conventional ground ambulance facilities. In some cases these emergency vehicles are also used in medical repatriation.
The facility of air ambulance Hawaii has can be availed for patient transport, organ transport, and medical repatriation among other services. The services are available with most carriers 24 hours of the day and can be checked for how medical insurances can cover the charges. The Kahului airport in Hawaii has well connected air routes with air carriers and has food facilities for carrying patients for the air dispatch.