COMMENT: Pat on Government’s back for introducing the Helidrive service
NOT everyone celebrated when the Government acquired about 18 helicopters from Russia in 2023.
Officials said then that the planes were to be used for air policing, rescue missions and as air ambulances. A year later, the Helidrive National Air Rescue Service (Helidrive) took off. It offers its services for free across the country, much more efficiently.
No road ambulance, even the fastest one, can drive from Bulawayo to Maphisa in Matabeleland South in 27 minutes. Traffic, the condition of the road and the general terrain do not allow that.
However, a Helidrive copter did that last week after an emergency call. A 13-year-old was in labour at Maphisa Hospital. Given the lack of specialist equipment and personnel at Maphisa, Helidrive was called to airlift the mother-to-be so she could deliver at the United Bulawayo Hospitals (UBH). It flew there in 27 minutes, picked up the expectant mother but her labour was so urgent that she ended up delivering mid-air. In about 20 minutes, she and her baby landed at UBH and were immediately put under the necessary care.
Given her young age, the mother’s pregnancy and delivery were extremely risky. It was going to be worse if the job that Helidrive did had been done by a road ambulance.
Just this one Maphisa story, obviously among many across the country, asserts the essentiality of the Helidrive service in our health delivery system and how totally lost critics of the acquisition of the planes are.
Between August last year and early March this year, Helidrive had conducted 267 emergency evacuations countrywide. Many more have been conducted since then.
No one knows what could have happened to the 13-year-old Maphisa mother and her baby and hundreds of others before and after them if the Helidrive critics had had their way.
Like other initiatives that the Government has come up with, the air ambulance service is game-changing, more so because it is free of charge.
Authorities deserve a pat on the back for introducing this service. It is helping some of the most resource-poor among us, those who do not have any money to hire an ambulance, not to mention an air ambulance.
This initiative is preserving life and making air ambulance services, extremely elitist previously, more accessible to many.
The Government and reliable partner, Russia must expand the Helidrive fleet, continuing to fly patients free of charge, so that more of our people can benefit.
This, together with the just-beginning Government investment in the public health system, will make health services more accessible to the majority, an important step towards attainment of Vision 2030.
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