Aviation

Air ambulance yet to be explored maximally in Nigeria – CEO, Flying Doctors

 

The founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flying Doctors Nigeria, Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Ola Brown Orekunrin in this interview with PILOT AVIATION speaks on how the air ambulance has impacted on the Nigerian economy.
Excerpts:


Can you give an insight into services of air ambulance?

Flying Doctors is an Aviation handling air Ambulance Company that is into saving the lives of people. It helps people who are critically ill to get to the right medical facilities quickly. Many people with medical challenges find it difficult to get health facilities especially those living in remote areas. It takes longer time and distance for them to get access to healthcare delivery. So what we do is to provide the medical equipment, and helicopter or section of the commercial plane to ensure that these people can get to hospital quicker than expected. And we do a lot of transportation within the country from Maiduguri to Abuja, Yola to Abuja, Port Harcourt and we also cover some of the African countries like Chad, Niger and Mali flying some of the patients within Nigeria into some of the hospitals in Abuja and Lagos for medical attention before flying them back to their countries or refer them to Europe, Germany and America when necessary. We fly into Nigeria for stabilisation purpose and when they are stabilised we fly them back to their countries. And if it is a Nigerian that requires such medical care we transport them all over the world; to China, India, London and America for treatment, so that is the beauty of our job.

Do you have offices across the airports in the country?

We have offices in some airports but for Ilorin we fly an aircraft based in Lagos into Ilorin to carry patients to any part of the world where they need to go and every of our aircraft has medical facilities inbuilt that can keep the patient alive to his or her destination. We have offices in two airports but we cover all African countries.  The patients make their choices but there are instances we suggest medical destinations for best treatment.

How can you compare your service in the Nigerian aviation sector with that of developed countries like America?

In America for example they have millions of air ambulances and they are not taking anybody out of America as the country has the medical facilities. And the Americans know that it’s easier and cheaper for them to subscribe to their services. So they don’t take their patients to other countries. It is not mandated for us to have offices in every state before we can offer healthcare services. Take for example, Dangote doesn’t have offices in every state but supply every state with his commodities. So it is easier and better for us to move our patients to places where they need medical treatment.

Is there a working relationship between your organisation and the Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) of Nigeria?

We don’t have working relationship with AIB but we have been called upon to attend to victims of aircraft crashes, whereby we handled cases of victims that needed to be transferred to some places for effective treatment. We also partner Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) to quicken our response to emergency cases, to give us priority over other aircraft plying a particular route in order to attend with urgency to the patients

What unique service delivery do you offer that differs from other air ambulances in the country?

Ours is the oldest indigenous air ambulance in the country with a lot of success records and experience. We have been operating for almost ten years with different categories of aircraft. We have a history in the industry of qualitative service delivery to our customers.  We have gone to evacuate victims of fire disaster and bomb blasts. We save hundreds of lives per year. My advice to the Federal Government regarding the growing aviation industry is to provide state-of-the art equipment and experienced personnel to meet with the world standard. I really feel concerned about the aviation industry and know that much is yet to be achieved for the growth of the economy. People see aviation as a sector that can grow the economy, growing air ambulance for instance, it is just one aspect of aviation sector and not many people know that it can really boost the economy and create jobs for the younger ones. Aviation has a great potential to deliver economy advancement and I think we need to take advantage of potentials in the industry to make Nigeria aviation hub.

Show More

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button