Yesterday Ryan past the milestone of 5,000 flight hours in the 16 years that he has been a pilot!

He passed the milestone whilst doing a Medical Evacuation flight. Yesterday was Easter Monday, a none-flying public holiday, but we got a call at about 10:30am from MAF Technologies, who man the radios, to say a 17 year old first time Mum had a retained placenta at Yapsie, and a 9 year old boy had fallen out of a tree at Tumolbil and had been seriously injured which resulted in his intestines spilling out.

Ryan put on his uniform and headed to the base to start getting the plane ready, whilst Shiv confirmed the patient details. We found out that the young woman who had recently given birth was unconscious, which meant we needed 2 stretchers to pick up both patients in one trip. Yapsie & Tumolbil are about 10 mins apart, so it was much faster to pick them both up and bring them to Telefomin at the same time, but our base only has 1 stretcher.

Thankfully, we have a great relationship with the Telefomin Hospital, so Shiv headed straight there to ask if we could borrow a stretcher and if a Nurse was available to accompany Ryan. We don’t routinely take Nurses, especially as a lot of our Medevacs happen during a normal flying program, so the plane diverts whilst it’s out, but as the plane was starting in Telefomin and Ryan needed time to prepare the aircraft, this allowed us time to speak to the Hospital and Nurse Francis, who was working in the Outpatient Clinic, kindly agreed to go along.

Whilst we were making all the preparations, another Medvac call came in, this time from Waiki with a patient wanting to go to Oksapmin. An 8 year old boy had fallen into a fire and was badly burnt. Waiki is a little further away from Telefomin so Ryan ran the flight plan and reported back to the Medevac coordinator in Mt Hagen that he was concerned he would run out of daylight, depending on how long it took him to collect the 2 stretcher patients. As a result, they decided to launch another pilot out of Mt Hagen to pick up the burnt boy.

Ryan flew straight to Yapsie and picked up the young woman, then headed to Tumolbil. Sadly, the injuries of the boy who fell out of the tree, were so sever that he died on the ground in Tumolbil, minutes before Ryan landed. There is no doctor in Telefomin Hospital, so it is unlikely he would have received the emergency surgery and medicines needed to save his life. When Ryan landed he was told of the boy’s passing, so they left Tumolbil quickly to get the young woman to the hospital.

The Telefomin Hospital Ambulance was standing by when Ryan landed and she was moved straight from the airplane into the Ambulance. Then, whilst Ryan was finishing his paperwork and preparing his plane for the next day, he received a call about another Medevac, this time directly from the Agent at our neighbouring airstrip of Eliptamin. A woman had complained of stomach pains and then collapsed. As Eliptamin is only a 5 min flight away, Ryan had daylight enough to safely pick her up and bring her to Telefomin. Unfortunately, when they landed at about 5pm, the Ambulance driver had already gone home and no-one could reach him. The woman was still unconscious so she needed to be taken to the hospital on the MAF Stretcher. Ryan called Shiv who immediately tracked down our neighbours who were out with the MAF truck, met them and then drove to the base to pick up the patient. This is not the first time Shiv has been the Ambulance driver.

Despite the sadness of the death of the young boy, we helped two lives, two families, an unexpectedly busy day and a great sense of achievement and blessing for us both!