HISTORY OF AIR AMBULANCE TRANSPORT

This article will be educating us about what an air ambulance is and the history of air ambulances.

What Is An Air Ambulance?

An air ambulance is a specially outfitted helicopter, or fixed wing aircraft, that medevac injured or sick people in a medical emergency or over distances or terrain impractical for a conventional ground ambulance. Fixed wing aircraft are also more often used to move patients over long distances and for repatriation from foreign countries. These and related operations are called aeromedical. In some circumstances, the same aircraft may be used to search for missing or wanted people.

Like ground ambulances, air ambulances are equipped with medical equipment vital to monitoring and treating injured or ill patients. Common equipment for air ambulances includes medications, ventilators, ECGs and monitoring units, CPR equipment, and stretchers. A medically staffed and equipped air ambulance provides medical care in flight—while a non-medically equipped and staffed aircraft simply transports patients without care in flight. Military organizations and NATO refer to the former as medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) and to the latter as casualty evacuation (CASEVAC)

History of Air Ambulances

As with many Emergency Medical Service (EMS) innovations, treating patients in flight originated in the military. The concept of using aircraft as ambulances is almost as old as powered flight itself. Hot air balloons were used to evacuate wounded 160 soldiers at the Siege of Paris in 1870. However, the first true Air Ambulance flight was made when a Serbian officer was flown from the battlefield to hospital by French Air Service. French records at the time indicated that the mortality rate of the injured was reduced from 60% to just under 10% if soldiers were evacuated by air.

The first recorded British ambulance flight took place in 1917, in Turkey, when a soldier in the Camel Corps who had been shot in the ankle was flown to hospital in a de Havilland DH9 in 45 minutes. The same journey by land would have taken some 3 days to complete. In the 1920s, several services, both official and unofficial, started up in various parts of the world. Aircraft were still primitive at the time, with limited capabilities, and the effort received mixed reviews.

Commercial Air Ambulance

The first civilian uses of aircraft as ambulances were probably incidental. In northern Canada, Australia, and in Scandinavian countries, remote, sparsely populated settlements are often inaccessible by road for months at a time, or even year round. In some places in Scandinavia, particularly in Norway, the primary means of transportation between communities is by boat. Early in aviation history, many of these communities began to rely on civilian "bush" pilots, who fly small aircraft and transport supplies, mail, and visiting doctors or nurses. Bush pilots probably performed the first civilian air ambulance trips, albeit on an ad hoc basis—but clearly, a need for these services existed. In the early 1920s, Sweden established a standing air ambulance system, as did Siam (Thailand). In 1928 the first formal, full-time air ambulance service was established in the Australian outback. This organization became the Royal Flying Doctor Service and still operates. In 1934, Marie Marvingt established the first civil air ambulance service in Africa, in Morocco. In 1936, air ambulance services were established as part of the Highlands and Islands Medical Service to serve more remote areas of Highland Scotland.

The air ambulance system has progressed from that time to the sophisticated specially equipped state of the art aircraft we have in almost every region of the world today. Some have even been fitted to transport patients with highly infectious diseases such as Ebola.

This concludes our brief look into the history of air ambulance evacuation. 

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