On Rotors of Mercy - Irish Community Air Ambulance launched

I know, I know. You’re all waiting for the third part of my Dubai Trip Report, and believe me, I’m working on it. There will be a slight delay for that, however, due to some recent events and developments here in Cork that have caught my attention. One of them, the visit of a certain Dutch submarine, was the topic of an article last week. While that was a rather lighthearted thing, the topic of this article will be much more serious, though I cannot guarantee that the tone will be equally serious. We’re talking about a service that could mean the difference between life and death for residents in remote communities in Munster.

Image: Michael McSweeney, Provision - Supplied by Irish Community Air Ambulance

Ireland is a country that traditionally hasn’t been blessed with the best of road networks. The fact that this network is mainly pointed towards Dublin certainly doesn’t help. This, combined with a low population density outside of the main urban centres, has often meant that emergency services are hard to come by, especially along the Atlantic Coast. West Cork, and Kerry are two particularly stark examples of this. Don’t get me wrong, the National Ambulance Service is doing its best to serve these areas, but in an area where most of the roads haven't been improved or widened since the independence of this country, there’s only so much they can do. 

The first steps to improve this situation were taken in 2008. Triggered by a tragic incident in West Cork that cost the life of a child back in 2006, a community initiative in West Cork established the first Volunteer-based Rapid Response service in Ireland. Working with local doctors and paramedics, as well as strategically placed Rapid Response Vehicles, the aim of this initiative is to provide professional medical care within what is known as the Golden Hour, when medical intervention has the highest chance of saving a patient’s life. What initially started as a West Cork initiative has since spread all across Ireland. Irish Community Rapid Response, or ICRR, has helped save the lives numerous patients across Ireland, and out of every hundred emergencies, the volunteers manage to save six lives that would have otherwise been lost. 115 medical professionals are currently volunteering for ICRR, while the organisation hopes to have 500 volunteer GPs by 2020. 

Now, a new initiative has been rolled out to bring this type of emergency response to the next level. Literally. Wednesday marke the official announcement of the Irish Community Air Ambulance, or ICAA, the first community air ambulance service in the country. 

With help from the local community, this could soon be reality in the skies over Munster
Image: Michael Sweeney, Provision - Supplied by Irish Community Air Ambulance

Now don’t get me wrong here. It’s not as if Ireland doesn’t already have helicopter based emergency services, on the contrary. The pilots and aircrew of the existing services are doing a great job. However, existing air ambulance services are rudimentary, to say the least. Currently, there is one dedicated air ambulance in the country. You read that right. One. It is a single Agusta-Westland AW-139, Air Corps 112, operating out of a Forward Operating Base in Custume Barracks, Athlone. While other assets can be called upon as required, such as the helicopters of 301 Squadron, Irish Air Corps, or the Irish Coast Guard, only Air Corps 112 is on 24 hour standby, 365 days a year. And while both the AW-139 of the Air Corps and the Sikorsky S-92 of the Coast Guard are powerful, fast, versatile helicopters, there’s only a limited number of them. Take other taskings, downtime for maintenance, crew training, joint training with the Army or the Navy, as well as joint operations with an Garda Siochana into consideration, and you’ll see that the resources are stretched to the limits with just one helicopter. 

An Agusta Westland AW-139 of the Irish Air Corps. A helicopter of this type is permanently on standby as Ireland's only dedicated air ambulance helicopter.
By Jerry Gunner from Lincoln, UK (274 Agusta Westland 139 Irish Air Corps Baldonnell) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

EI-ICA and the other Sikorsky S-92 of the Irish Coast Guard can be called upon when needed as well, but their primary task is Search and Rescue.
By Riatsnapper (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

That’s where ICAA comes in. From Late 2017, they plan to operate a Eurocopter EC135 out of Cork Airport, in order to provide a dedicated air ambulance service for the province of Munster. For those of you that don’t live in Ireland, the province of Munster covers the southwest of Ireland, and includes the counties of Cork, Clare Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford. The choice of helicopter is no accident. The EC135 has proven itself with air ambulance services in Wales and Scotland, two of the few places in Europe where the weather can be even worse than in the west of Ireland. It is fully certified to operate under IFR (Instrument Flight Rules, a.k.a. “It’s F*ckin’ Raining”) conditions, and there’s going to be a lot of that in West Cork or Kerry. It’s also a twin-engine aircraft, meaning that there’s always a fallback in case one engine fails.

Now why the hell am I writing about this? Well, as it stands, the ICAA will not get any funding from Irelands national health service, the HSE, or from other government bodies. Therefore, they will depend on donations to get this service off the ground (pun fully intended). Operating such a Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) costs a lot of money. ICAA estimates they will need about €2million to get started and about €1million a year to keep the service operating afterwards. That may sound like a lot of money, but given the fact that the province of Munster sports a population of 1.2 million people, it really isn’t that much. 2€ per person per year would be all that’s needed to keep the service going. ICAA will not be purchasing a helicopter themselves, as the costs of that would be prohibitive. A Eurocopter EC135 has an average fly-away price of around 3.8 million Euro, and that’s before any medical equipment is installed, or maintenance and operational costs are factored in. Rather, they plan to follow a model successfully established in the UK. There, specialised companies, such as CHC Helicopter, or Babcock Mission Critical Services Offshore Ltd. operate specially equipped helicopters for air ambulance services from Scotland to Kent. ICAA plan to put the actual operation of the helicopter out to tender, a concept not exactly new to Ireland. The five Sikorsky S-92 of the Irish Coast Guard are provided by CHC Helicopter through just such a contract. 

Now, I don’t usually ask my readers to donate to a specific cause. I believe it is just not my place to tell you what you should consider worthwhile or not. However, this time, it is different. Air Ambulances can often mean the difference between life and death, especially in sparsely populated regions with poor infrastructure. Having seen the rugged terrain and narrow roads of Co. Kerry myself, there are some areas where a helicopter is the only viable options. With the Irish Government having its hands full already, I believe it is now our job to support this initiative. Check out their website at www.communityairambulance.com, follow them on Facebook or Twitter, and please donate. Every Euro helps!