Major boost for air ambulance campaign

Major boost for air ambulance campaign

9 September 2015

A PORTAFERRY doctor’s dream of securing Northern Ireland’s first air ambulance service may soon be fulfilled despite his death.

As a petition of 81,000 signatures was yesterday presented by friends of Dr John Hinds to the Health Minister at Stormont, Dr Hinds’s family has said there could be no greater legacy to him.

The petition calling for the creation of an airborne emergency service was created in memory of the motorbike medic, who had actively campaigned for the helicopter service before his untimely death at a Skerries 100 practice session in Dublin in early July.

Dubbed motorcycle racing’s ‘flying doctor’ for his voluntary work on the Irish road racing circuit, Dr Hinds, a former pupil of St  Patrick’s Grammar School, was credited with saving many lives by being quickly on the scene of accidents on his own bike.

A consultant anaesthetist at Craigavon Area Hospital, he had argued the service was a necessity rather than a luxury.

Just a few months before his death, Dr Hinds met Mr Hamilton as part of his campaign and the Minister last week threw his weight behind the project by expressing his commitment to transform trauma services.

Mr Hamilton revealed that a public consultation will be carried out to determine the details of a helicopter emergency medical service, which is expected to operate out of an airport in Fermanagh.

He said he hoped charitable funding would be secured to finance the service, which is expected to take £2.38million to launch with a further £1.8million to run.

The service would operate throughout Northern Ireland and fly to help seriously injured people with a skilled major trauma team on board.

Speaking after the presentation of the petition at Stormont yesterday, Dr Hinds’s partner Dr Janet Acheson, and the Hinds family said there could be no greater legacy to John.

“There is a growing momentum to establishing a HEMS in Northern Ireland,” they said.

“We welcome the consultation announced last week by the Health Minister Simon Hamilton and the work done by Assemblyman Jim Allister.

“We are humbled by the number of people who have signed the petition organised by HEMS4NI.

“It was John’s great wish to see a properly structured HEMS set up in Northern Ireland and we sincerely thank all those people who are working so hard to make his dream a reality.”

Mr Stephen Henderson, who is one of the key co-ordinators of the campaign, said the project had “taken on a life of its own” since Dr Hinds’s untimely passing.

He said many people were keen to push ahead either because they had known John personally or because they thought the petition was the best way to make the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service finally happen.

A friend of Dr Hinds for 13 years, he said he got to know him through the road racing scene.

Although he is now confident the campaign is moving in the right direction, Mr Henderson said the team recently faced a potentially major setback when it realised Stormont required a traditional paper petition rather than an online version.

“It was only at the 11th hour that we realised Stormont required the paper petition and that means we had to change our focus,” he said.

“It gave us an extra push to get the numbers up and we managed to get 16,000 paper signatures to go alongside 65,000 online.

“This campaign is very much in John’s memory and has the backing of his family. John was passionate about pre-hospital trauma care and he was committed to this happening. 

“As he is no longer with us to do this, we hope this is the best way to go forward in his memory.

“We need to keep pushing ahead with this and keep the pressure on as at the moment in Northern Ireland we have a 20th century pre-hospital trauma scenario. 

“Continuing until the service is in place is all we can do to honour John’s memory and to turn something very tragic into a legacy that will continue.”