Busiest year ever for Essex & Herts Air Ambulance

7^th January 2019

Busiest year ever for Essex & Herts Air Ambulance

Essex & Herts Air Ambulance (EHAAT) attended a total of 1,491 patients in 2018, making it the busiest year ever for the Charity’s Critical Care Teams. The figure is an increase of 2% on 2017 with 1,461 patients and a rise of 38% on the 2016 total of 1,077.

EHAAT’s helicopters and Rapid Response Vehicles were dispatched on a total of 2,241 occasions last year. Of these 1,852 (83%) were for incidents in Essex and Hertfordshire. The remainder were to attend patients in Suffolk, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Greater London and Kent to provide support when the local air ambulances were already committed.

Medical incidents accounted for 39% of the total, followed by road traffic collisions (24%) and accidental injuries (15%). The remaining 22% included a mix of cases such as assaults and sports/leisure accidents.

The busiest part of the year came in May, June and July, with more than 200 missions each month. During 2018 over 300 missions took place on a Saturday, making it the busiest day of the week.

Stuart Elms, Clinical Director at EHAAT, commented: “The need for the Charity’s life-saving service is as strong now as it was twenty years ago when our first helicopter, covering just Essex, took to the air with two Paramedics in 1998.

“We now operate Critical Care Teams consisting of a Pre-hospital Care Doctor and Critical Care Paramedic and have two state-of-the-art helicopters covering the counties of Essex and Hertfordshire. They are backed up by Rapid Response Vehicles after sunset and in poor weather.

“With the help of our supporters across Essex and Hertfordshire we will continue to develop our service to give the best critical care we can to the critically ill and seriously injured patients that we attend.”

-ENDS-

Photographs: Stuart Elms (Clinical Director, EHAAT) and the Charity’s AgustaWestland 169 helicopter.

For more information please contact Gavin Sherriff, PR Officer, on 0345 2417 690.

Notes to Editor:

Essex & Herts Air Ambulance (EHAAT) is a Charity that provides a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) for the critically ill and injured of Essex, Hertfordshire and surrounding areas.

The service is provided free of charge but, unlike NHS emergency services, the Charity receives no direct funding from the Government or National Lottery. It costs in excess of £500,000 every month to keep the service operational and saving lives, and this would not be possible without the generosity and goodwill of people and businesses of Essex, Hertfordshire and beyond.

Each of the Charity’s HEMS teams consist of a Pilot, a Co-pilot, a Pre-hospital Care Doctor and a Critical Care Paramedic.

These teams, made up of highly-skilled individuals, tended to 1505 patients in 2017/18 and are the backbone of your local life-saving Charity.

The fleet, consisting of two Air Ambulances, and four Rapid Response Vehicles (RRVs - cars) operates seven days a week from 7am to 9pm. After sunset, the Critical Care Team continues to provide the service using Rapid Response Vehicles.

In addition, a Rapid Response Vehicle is operational on a Friday and Saturday evening from 6pm until 2am with a Pre-hospital Care Doctor and Critical Care Paramedic.