Mission aviation supporting people in rural areas

THIRD level airline Mission Aviation Felloship (MAF) says it has been supporting people in remote areas of the country with emergency medical evacuation (medevac) services since December.
MAF in a statement said that it had received calls for help from district hospitals and health centres to transport pregnant women in prolonged labour and experiencing other complications from remote villages as well as badly injured people and the sick.
“At Mougulu, a women who went into septic shock was given intravenous fluids and antibiotics to stabilise her (condition) after she gave birth to twins, was arilifted by MAF to the Kiunga Hospital for further treatment,” the airline said.
MAF said its willingness to help people in need had also been abused.
On Dec 7 an MAF plane landed in a remote area of Telefomin, West Sepik, to medevac an injured man and ended up taking several more people on board back to Telefomin station to attend the annual Min sports tournament.
“ The pilot was rather disappointed getting called on his day off and MAF being played by people seeking to take advantage of our emergency flights.”
The airline reported that an incident occurred in a remote area of Gulf which saw a woman requiring emergency surgery.
The victim was brought by canoe, a three hour trip, over night to Kikori hospital but medical staff referred her to Port Moresby General Hospital and called MAF for a medevac to Port Moresby.
On Dec 28, a mother of a five month old baby, who was raped as she went to the toilet at midnight, was airlfited to Mt Hagen for treatment at Mt Hagen General Hospital.
The following day, MAF said its pilot picked up another woman with birthing difficulties.
Another patient was a young female student who with her father had walked for five hours to Bak airstrip with the hope of getting airlifted to hospital.
The girl had been suffering from severe headaches and other internal pain for two weeks.
The same day, the pilot flew another medevac from Elitpamin to Telefomin, on board were parents with a new born baby boy who had a swollen chest.