Warwickshire and Northants Air Ambulance
| Published: 26th September 2007 20:38 |
The Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance (WNAA) was established in October 2003 to provide an emergency medical service for the heart of England including Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes. Prior to this, the region had relied on older, slower aircraft with limited space for onboard patient treatment. The new service shifted the emphasis from transporting casualties to hospital, to recognising the need to get senior Doctors and Consultants to the scene of incidents as quickly as possible, providing lifesaving treatment and medication at the scene and en-route to hospital.
Fact File
The WNAA is one of only three services outside of London to routinely carry a Doctor on board. Our primary response area is the 2000 square miles of Coventry, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Milton Keynes and some of the key border areas like Market Harborough, Banbury and Solihull. However, we also help out our neighbours under a mutual aid agreement, in Birmingham, the West Midlands, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Leicestershire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
The service has 12 Doctors, 12 Paramedics & 3 Pilots which service a population of around 1.1 million people. Based at Coventry Airport, in the three years it has been operating, it has flown over 4500 missions. With an ever-increasing callout rate of between 120 and 150 callouts per month, the WNAA is the busiest air ambulance in the UK.
No Government or National Lottery Funding!
The WNAA is a registered charity and relies totally on donations and sponsorship. The average cost per mission is around £850 and the annual running cost of the service is over £1.4 million. Currently only able to operate in daylight hours due to the restrictive leasing costs of flying at night, WNAA aims to become the first service in the UK to operate 24 hours per day by raising over £2 million during 2007.
One of the supported and valued charities in the area.
For further details see www.wnaa.co.uk
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