ProMedical needs a new ventilator!

ProMedical is a non-government charitable ambulance service in Vanuatu. We receive no direct funding for daily operations from the Government.

On Friday 8th August our Critical Care Paramedic responded to a remote island of Vanuatu to a major incident with 16 people injured in a vehicle roll over. One of the patients was a 13yof who had her whole life ahead of her. There were 12 people either critically or seriously injured that needed medical evacuation flights back to the tertiary hospital in Port Vila. This young teen had a traumatic brain injury and needed the best possible chance of survival, so she was intubated to help protect her brain. This meant that once she was given medication to paralyse her and stop her breathing on her own, someone else had to ventilate her. This took a bit of a turn when we found out our initial flight was now going to be 2-3hrs later than planned to CAAV laws. We now had to hand ventilate her for 4.5hrs. This was a mammoth task and it is for this reason we are reaching out to the community to help ProMedical purchase new state of the art battery powered ventilator!

We need one that operates for at least 6 hours on a battery as we do not always have a substantial oxygen supply - as an example on this flight we had 3 other critically unwell children which all required use to share the oxygen around - 3 with traumatic brain injuries.

The planes we operate in are extremely small with very little room to operate in.