The New South Wales Air Ambulance

Extract

The Air Ambulance of New South Wales came into operation on Good Friday 1967. Less than sixteen months later as I write it has carried 2348 patients in 807 flights. Four hundred and eleven of these patients have been emergencies and it is highly probable that most of them would not have survived a long distance road journey. With few exceptions all patients have been sent in by country doctors for specialist treatment in the metropolitan area.

Introduced as an Air Arm to the excellent road ambulance service it was intended to avoid the road journeys for distances of more than 175 miles. In the first year it saved that service 932 760 road miles. The time that patients would have spent on the road was 16 201 hours, this was reduced by air to 3 094 hours.

It is hardly necessary to add what this means to a sick or injured person. Although deeply unconscious and in a state of shock patients have been transported without their condition deteriorating.