FLYING DOCTORS

Shannon News, 13 July 1926, Page 4

FLYING DOCTORS

' The distinguished specialist who flies once in a while to a rich, importunate and distant patient is already familiar to most of us. Less is known of th e systematic use of aeroplanes for the sick and injured, although the ambulance aeroplane has already done good service. If an aeroplane can take the patient to the doctor it can also take the doctor to the patient, says the Lancet. This second life-saving use for the aeroplane is particularly applicable to Australia, with its average population density of only 1.83 persons per square mile, and in the April number of World’s Health H. C. Looffler tells how tli e aeroplane is helping to solve the problem of providing medical aid to distant settlers in that country. A single doctor at Darwin has a practice extending over an area ten times that of Great Britain hut the absence of bridges no longer prevents him from reaching patients far off in tlie Bush. The Australian Inland; Mission which has already been instrumental in supplying nursing homes to the | "Outer Bush,” is now proposing to (extend its activities to supplying ' doctors by aeroplane.

It has therefore, mapped the central part of the continent into circular districts, each with a radius of 200 miles (and area of over 180,000 square miles) which could he covered by flying doctors when necessary.

As a first step, the Mission proposes to develop a wireless service and to educate bushmen in its use. Meanwhile the aeroplane plan has been submitted to. the National Commission on Health, and it is hoped that it will meet with this body’s approval. The plan includes utilisation of the regular mail aeroplane services to furnish personnel and equipment under contract, for carrying these flying doctors In Nigeria the wife of a British official was bitten by a mad dog and —by the courtesy of the Governor of French West Africa, who sent her an aeroplane—was- transported 1,300 miles to the Pasteur Institute at Dakar, which she could not have reached otherwise for a month.

The aeroplane, it is evident, concludes the Lancet, has its record of salvation, as well as of destrudtion, and in the face of so rapid an advance it is not surprising to learn that in British Columbia (South America) a hospital is being built with a flat roof on -which, it is hoped, the regular air afnbulances will alight wilth their cargo. , -vi-MUW