Hope Medflight team transferred an elderly patient from San Francisco to Jakarta, Indonesia. The patient was on life support (ventilator).
To prepare for the flight, our physician had to liaise with the US treating physician, airline staff, engineers (seats conversion to stretcher), airport authorities (for tarmac access and security clearance) and local road ambulance providers (Jakarta and San Francisco).
Our doctor and nurse team flew to the US 24 H earlier to assess and prepare the patient for the long flight. The oxygen and power requirements had to be calculated and confirmed. Finally, family members were briefed on all eventualities.
The flight was smooth and the patient stable. He was continually monitored. The flight included a transit stop at Korea and a change of aircraft in Singapore.
The patient arrived safely in Indonesia. His family was happy and relieved.
Hope transfers by Learjet a severely ill teenage boy with dengue fever and respiratory and renal failure. His blood pressure was unstable and required multiple drug infusion inflight. He required a ventilator and dialysis, with a long stay in ICU. The determined young man recovered to return to Indonesia completely well.
Our team transfers an elderly man from USA to Jakarta. The unfortunate gentleman had a severe stroke while visiting his daughter. We used a commercial airliner with specially constructed stretcher, oxygen, monitoring and ventilator. Using an air-ambulance would have cost 800% more.
In Oct 2009, we do a commercial medical repatriation from Brazil to Manila. The patient requires a full ICU like setup inside the commercial airliner.
A young lady on a cycling expedition in Vietnam has an accident and sustains severe head injury. The local district hospital does immediate life saving surgery while out team scrambles. We arrive within hours, landing at a makeshift ex-US mil airstrip.. it is dark and a police car swithches on its lights to mark the end of the runway. We travel on a bumpy road (carrying full medical gear) and meet our Vietnamese counterparts.. a smooth and rapid handover .. the van is converted to an ambulance with our portable life support equipment. We fly back to Singapore with the cabin pressuried to sea-level. In Singapore 2 weeks on, our patient has had 2 more neuro-surgeries but is now out of ICu, walking and smiling..
