Recently I had a very long flying day - 5.4 hours and over 1200 km!
First I flew from Mt Hagen to Balimo via Wawoi Falls to drop off some passengers.
Then from Balimo to Suabi to pick up a team of Aerial Health Patrol workers who had been holding clinics there that week.
Finally from Balimo I flew to Kiriwo to collect a critically ill patient and take him to the hospital in Daru.
Kiriwo is in the South Fly District of the Western Province. I've only been there a handful of times - once in August for training, once in September to drop off passengers, and most recently at the end of November to pick up some local airstrip agents to take them to Balimo for a training course. On that occasion the agent told me that there was a sick man in the village and asked if I could go and have a look at him. I figured there was no harm in doing so - and I do like to see the villages and not just the airstrip when I go to bush places! Seeing how people live helps me keep a right perspective on why we are here.
The man was being treated at the local health clinic, about 200 m walk from the airstrip. When we arrived there was a big crowd of people, who noticed me straightaway and started murmuring, 'pailot i kam' (the pilot has come). I talked to the health worker who explained that to arrange a medevac flight, approval would be needed from both the doctor and the Western Provincial Health Authority. He told me they had just started the process. I figured the approvals weren't going to come through in the next half hour so I thanked them for their time and headed back to the airstrip.
About a week later MAF got the call that the man's condition had deteriorated to the point where he needed to be flown to Daru. Kiriwo is not a common destination for us (as evidenced by my two operational visits in three months) and it is a long way from our staffed bases at Telefomin and Hagen. The flight programming team was able to find a way to fit it into my schedule, and I was grateful to have the opportunity to do the flight as the previous time I wasn't really able to help much.
I had already taken out a seat and fitted the stretcher in Balimo while the guys there were refuelling, so when I arrived in Kiriwo the plane was ready. The man was carried from the health clinic to the airstrip on a mat. He was barely conscious and given his size it was easier to ask the people to lift the mat into the plane and I would strap him in around it. Another couple of people came to accompany him and we took off for the 50 minute flight to Daru.
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Transferring him from the plane to the ambulance at Daru
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It's both humbling and satisfying to be part of the lifeline for people living in bush communities. Not every village has an airstrip, and not every airstrip is maintained to the standard required by MAF to send our aircraft there. For every person that we fly to hospital, how many others suffer because a) they live too far away from an airstrip, and/or b) they don't seek medical help until it's too late? It can be demoralising to think about, but I choose to focus on the ones we are able to help.
Update, January 2023: I received news that the patient passed away in hospital in Daru a few days after the flight. Unfortunately this is sometimes the outcome of a medevac flight, despite our best efforts.
