Kettering Lions Flying High  

Kettering Lions Flying High

 

 

Kettering & District Lions Club is the first Lions club in the Midlands area to support the New National Children’s Air Ambulance with their annual raffle which raised £2147.00. Over the last seven years, they have donated a total of more than £19,350 to the Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance, (WNAA), and this year they are supporting The Children’s Air Ambulance, which is a new emergency service run by the Air Ambulance Service.

The Children’s Air Ambulance is a new unique helicopter service that will transfer seriously ill young patients from hospitals to dedicated paediatric care units in England, and will drastically reduce travel times; improving a patients chance of survival and easing the stress of the child’s family. It will use a specially adapted helicopter, highly trained pilots and a transfer coordination team to fly with critically ill children and babies to Paediatric Intensive Care Units. The Children’s Air Ambulance will not distract from the normal Air Ambulances that will stay in their areas looking after the community for traumas and illnesses.

Approximately 5,800 young patients need transferring every year in England and Wales and until now the majority of transfers have had to take place by road. This helicopter will be kitted out with paediatric equipment that is not found in a normal air ambulance, and will transfer patients suffering from a wide range of life threatening illnesses including; severe complications after birth, neurological emergencies, coma, severe meningitis, major organ failure and severe burns, and will start transferring children and babies early in 2013.

Three members of Kettering Lions presented the cheque to pilot Dan Martin, when they visited Sloane Helicopters at Sywell to see the specialist equipment being installed, and were given an explanation of how the helicopter will be used to save childrens lives. Lion Harry Mayes has had first hand experience, when his granddaughter required lifesaving surgery immediately after her birth, but had to endure a long and bumpy 70 mile journey to a specialist childrens hospital in Nottingham, which the WNAA pilot said would have taken less than 30 minutes in a helicopter.