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Aero-Med conference at Dubai Helishow discussed difficulties of establishing and maintaining HEMS services in the Gulf region
Dubai, UAE: The lack of coordination between agencies remains one of the major problems for civilian services who are asked or try to establish aero-medical services in this region, delegates to the Aero-Med Conference were told today by several speakers. The conference was being staged during the opening day of Helishow Dubai, held at the Dubai Airport Expo Centre in the United Arab Emirates.
Keynote speaker Major Dr Nasser Al Nuaimi MD, commander Air Force Medical Centre, UAE Air Force and Air Defense, told delegates that cultural attitudes within the Gulf region also needed to be addressed when providing aero-medical services. He said that transport of female patients often created an issue, in that family members invariably wanted to escort their relatives inside the helicopter.
Major Nasser said that there were four main challenges to establishing an operation of this kind:
- There is a real challenge in maintaining standby status 15 minutes during the day and 30 minutes during the night 24/7.
- There is concern about the current availability of qualified flight paramedics as there seems to be a recognised shortage around the world. On top of this there is the challenge to keep them current in medical training: we have not yet defined a way of ensuring their ongoing currency.
- Policy and procedural standardisation. Major Nasser considered that the introduction of medical insurance into the UAE would increase the difficultly in this area.
- There are an increasing number of service providers who lack collaboration between themselves both locally and nationally. He called for all parties involved to seek a way to increase national collaboration (in addition to the UAE Air Force, three police air wings (Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah operate aero-medical missions); in addition to Abu Dhabi Aviation, Royal jet and Falcon Aviation Serivces).
AJ Baker, director of business development at Falcon Aviation Services (FAS), reviewed some of the experiences his company had encountered in trying to provide a commercial search and rescue service (in partnership with Evergreen) to replace the UAE Air Force. He said that his organisation had achieved a 98.6% availability rate against a mandated 90% in the contract (with three out of four aircraft continually available from two Bell 412EPs and two AW139s).
AJ said that there were only 53 days between the signing of the contract and the due date to begin operations. The launch authority and inter-agency communication had been vague at times with different organisations phoning them directly giving orders to get into the air, then others organisations countermanding the order, being an early problem.
He also pointed out that the very short work-up period meant that they started with little organisational awareness of the area that they were being called to operate in: where the no-fly zones were, where they could and couldn't expect to refuel away from base, their recovery locations and a familiarisation with those they would be operating with, such as air traffic controllers.
He said that in the two years of the contract they had only had 19 full SAR launches, although they did perform 520 missions at a rate of 22 per month. There was mission creep in that they performed 103 medical flights which they were not contracted to perform
LifeFlight, the established air ambulance service was also created in five months and experienced similar problems regarding knowledge of its area of operations to FAS. One of its successes was to achieve unrestricted flight approval to enact missions whenever they were called ' a huge step for a civil operator where before only military aircraft had been allowed to fly in Qatar's national airspace (other than airline traffic). It was unique and sounds easy but it was not; but everyone got together and made it happen,' said Malcolm Perry, EMS assistant executive director, Qatar HEMS Programme.
By Andrew Drwiega
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