East Anglian Air Ambulance

The East Anglian Air Ambulance (EAAA)

The EAAA is the charity operating the 365 day air ambulance service across the four counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.  Working in partnership with the East of England NHS Ambulance Trust road ambulance teams, it plays a vital role in the emergency care network in the region.  It receives no direct Government or National Lottery funding and has to raise £4.2 million to operate it's life-saving service.

The four counties it serves combine to form 11% of the total landmass of England and Wales – a huge area, much of it rural with many inaccessible and remote places and a long coast line.  Along with a poor road infrastructure with few motorways and frequent congestion it means a journey by road for some seriously ill patients can take well over an hour.  This is where the EAAA can help.

The charity operates two helicopters:  Anglia One, based at Norwich Airport and serving Norfolk and Suffolk, and Anglia Two, based at Cambridge Airport, serving Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire.  From these two bases, a patient anywhere in the region can be reached in around around 13 minutes.

The aircraft are manned by highly trained doctor/paramedic teams who can reach the scene of accidents or medical emergencies across the region in minutes.  Once at the incident scene they can begin treatment immediately.  In fact, the range of time-critical procedures the air ambulance teams can perform means they can offer a standard of emergency care usually found only in a hospital.  For instance, a patient can be anaesthetised at the incident site should their condition require it or a patient suffering a heart attack can be given a blood clot busting drug.  Research shows that longer the patient is without the drug the more heart muscles die and that every minute saved adds 11 days to the patient’s life.  Follow this through and one hour saved can add nearly two years.

Where necessary, patients can also be flown straight to the closest A&E department arriving in minutes when, in some cases, a journey by road could take the best part of an hour. More seriously injured patients are flown to the specialist hospital in the region most suited to treat them.  For instance, patients requiring neurosurgery will often be taken directly to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge while those with serious burns will be taken to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford.  In many instances, however, the level of care EAAA teams provide at the accident scene enables the patient to be stabilised so that they can then be conveyed by road ambulance to hospital, freeing up the aircraft to attend the next emergency.

It’s this combination of definitive care at the accident site and rapid onward transfer to hospital which is often so vital in saving lives or at least improving patients’ prospects of making a full recovery.  Naturally, the advanced skills, drugs and equipment and the cost of operation make the call out cost for the EAAA aircraft higher than that of a road ambulance so we are primarily tasked to assist at life threatening incidents or where accidents happen in remote or inaccessible locations.

The Trust tasking desk makes a judgement as to whether the EAAA is required based on the initial information it receives about an incident.  Sometimes a road ambulance crew attending an incident will realise that the injuries are more serious than expected and they can then also task the air ambulance directly.

However the call comes in, the EAAA always ready to respond and to play it's part in helping those in need.

More information on the EAAA, including ways to support this invaluable charity, can be found at www.eaaa.org.uk. 

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