Blood on board
Administering blood products on-scene and in-flight can help give our patients the best chance of surviving to hospital. Thanks to your support, we can now implement this life-saving treatment as a core part of our service for the next year.
In May, we launched an urgent appeal to help us permanently carry blood products on board every mission. The national clinical blood trial, RePhill, which we were involved in had recently ended, and we were faced with the urgent need to raise just under £90,000 to implement this treatment to our most gravely injured patients, with yearly ongoing costs of over £70,000.
We are delighted and humbled to announce that thanks to the continued incredible support of our community, we have now reached our ‘blood on board’ fundraising target, enabling us to implement blood products as a core part of our life-saving service.
This will enable us to fund all of the equipment we need to implement this project and cover the first year’s worth of blood products. A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to this appeal.
A personal message from our Head of Operations, Richard:
Due to the pandemic restricting our ability to raise funds through events and other community-based activities, we turned to our supporters to help us implement this vital treatment as a core part of our service. By participating in the national RePhill blood trial over the last few years, we have seen first-hand what a difference blood products can make to someone suffering a traumatic injury or extensive bleed, that only a surgeon in hospital can remedy.
Administering blood products on-scene and in-flight can give the patient the best chance of surviving to hospital, by increasing oxygen delivery and clot production. Now the trial is over, we will need to raise £70,000 a year to continue offering this lifesaving treatment. I’m truly amazed that within a month we had successfully hit, and succeeded, the target to implement the project and fund the first year’s supply of packed red blood cells and lyoplas (freeze-dried plasma). Thanks to this incredible support, these blood products will now be available on every mission, to every patient, from late July and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Reaching this target so quickly was made possible by several supporters and businesses who very generously responded to our ask, with one donation in particular taking us all by surprise. In mid-June, one of our supporters quietly contacted us to enquire how much we still needed to raise. This incredible supporter, who wishes to remain anonymous, then blew us all away when they offered to donate that full amount, which was over £17,000! This was something we did not see coming and gave us all an incredible boost. As this will be an annual cost for the charity, we were also moved by the offers of annual contributions from local businesses, such as ATTIK Estate Agents in Norfolk, who have pledged to donate £10,000 a year.
How blood helped to save Harry's life
17-year-old Harry Fisher was travelling along the A140 on his motorbike when he was involved in a near-fatal collision with a van.
When our crew arrived at the scene, the team weren’t sure if Harry would make it to hospital due to the extent of his injuries, specifically the amount of blood he was losing and that both of his lungs had collapsed.
Dr Jeremy Mauger, who was there on the day, said: “Given the amount of blood Harry had lost, without a blood transfusion his odds of surviving to hospital would have been significantly reduced.”
